please note that there is non-con in this particular chapter.

otherwise, I wish to send a big tysfm to all of my reviewers on this site. it means the world to me.

oOo

At first, Shane kept distance enough between them.

Distance that might have made it look much like two strangers meeting. Guardedly, and for the first time. Like if Shane had perhaps been inclined towards comity, the way he extended and gestured with his hand:

"You're bleeding quite a bit there, buddy."

Daryl did not reply.

Instead, he backed and stumbled rearward, messily. Shane watched him closely, his lip curling upward into the barbed initials of a grin.

Hobbling like that, must have busted an ankle. Might've knotted a knee. Either way, Daryl was scraped open bad at both arms, torn flesh smeared over blackish with gravel, the blood-strings that welled from the side of his head dripping down from his jawline like paint.

"M'fine," he muttered, shielding his face from the blinding beam of the headlights. "It's nothin."

But Shane did not believe that. Nor did he relent in his nearing, now that Daryl had made it to the rim of the byway, where the truck's light lit them only partially.

"You ain't fine," Shane told him. He motioned at the obvious steam fogging out from the bike. And not once did he veer his gaze away from Daryl, who now struggled to properly stand. "And that thing won't be up and running anytime soon. Not like that."

Now Daryl had begun to stress. Least, it seemed that way to Shane. What with the way his breath became a weighted pattern that limned itself vivid on the ups and downs of his chest. He even lurched forward a few steps, as if he meant to go right into the boscage of the highway.

Shane pocketed his phone. Calm and slow. He towered easily over Daryl's bent figure, looming over him just inches apart.

"You know, Rick's down that way," Shane noted, pointing left as if to clarify kindly. "Don't reckon you paid him a visit. This late, ain't an honest soul riding on this thruway."

Again, Daryl did not answer him. Though he did manage to stand proper again, his eyes lifting to glare once at Shane, a mean-looking warning within them.

And that's all that Shane needed.

Would ever need, the instant he happened to look down towards the general direction of Daryl's neck, a purple bruise there, red and shaped and recent.

Shane saw crimson.

His nostrils flared, his own neck tightening right down to the tendon. He popped it to the side, cracking it loudly in the dark.

"That thing on your neck." His tone was tense, as if it'd been stretched sick on a string. "Got a girl waiting?"

"Just back off man—"

"You know," Shane clipped. "Rick's taken a liking to you." He took a final step forward, his breath an imminent threat which flitted at the loose strands of Daryl's hair. "But see, Rick, no matter what that hillbilly head of yours is thinking, I know him best." He shoved Daryl back by the shoulder, harsh enough to have erred his balance. "That is my best friend. That is the man I love. I love him like he's my brother. And he ain't no cock-licking faggot."

But Daryl did not cower. And though he flinched once at the probable pain of his leg, he stood and measured up to Shane's greater height, the distant overcast of the truck's light hindering him dark into shadow.

Shane, however, remained unimpressed, his face skewed to the bone with a clenching disgust that only thickened and grew, undesisting.

"Don't suppose you go down there every so often," he fleered. "Fishing for scraps, fucking your pretty little mouth on his dick like some back-alley whore—"

Instantly, Daryl was on him like a bull.

He speared forward. Forcibly and with the blunt of his shoulder, taking the wind straight out of Shane's stomach. They fell into a toil, bone-first and onto the cold asphalt of the road. An act of knee-jerk efficiency on Daryl's behalf, as if maybe the guy had been brought up in some bar, enough that Shane had not calculized it at all: the way in which Daryl landed the first blow and quickly, twice-times.

Sharp knuckle struck crude against the bridge of Shane's nose. Two jars of impact so measured that they ruptured instantly through both muscle and cartilage. Blood seeped, pouring down fast from Shane's nostrils and reddening his gums. It hurt. It stung. And for a short moment in time, Shane could have sworn he'd seen double.

But Daryl's advantage was brisk, once Shane managed to re-palm his composure.

He caught Daryl's fist square in his hand by the third coming swing, bending it backward till Daryl relented and collapsed to the side. There, where Shane swiftly subdued him and straddled him from either side, punching hard at his jaw; a blow which left Daryl quite weakened beneath him.

But not resigned.

He squirmed, kicked with his legs. But Shane outweighed him easily.

"You're a wild little shit, aren't you," he hissed, his fingers furling vice-like around Daryl's neck. "Your brother teach you that trick?" He laughed, breathless. "Redneck little hicks thinkin you could just skitter on out from the mud and ruin lives. Well, it ain't gonna happen, friend. Not this time."

Slowly, Shane toughened his hold, squeezing infold. Daryl thrashed weakly below him. And soon, Daryl's eyes began to roll towards the back of his skull, his vision blotting.

But before he could black out or worse, Shane took his grip away and stood, leaving Daryl to choke and gag on the floor whilst he made for his truck, a pair of handcuffs in hand by the time he returned.

He reached down, grasping Daryl by the root of the hair.

And by the hair he led him, till he lay face-down and bent upon the passenger's seat of Shane's truck, the headlights now off but with the engine's ignition rumbling, droaning over the black silence of the night.

oOo

Shane cuffed him.

Daryl writhed and jerked. Desperate, violent.

But not once did he say a word. Nor did he call out.

Succinct, Shane tore downward with both hands, wrenching Daryl's jeans clean off to cockle at his knees.

Daryl tossed in renewed frenzy, chafing his wrists hard enough to rend open amid the steel of the handcuffs. But Shane's weight kept him braced into place, ceded, now that Shane had reached to the leather clasp of his belt, undoing the chape through the buckle and swiftly.

Daryl must have heard it, must have known it. Because now for the first time he made a stunted sort of sound, hoarse and broken. Something that, to Shane, sounded a lot like raw-red panic.

But Daryl did not plead, though he clawed like an animal at his ferric constraints. Nor did he beg against Shane, who now whisked at himself lazily.

Shane observed him, every naked inch of him. Up and down and thrice-times, until his cock stiffened and pulsed once inside the revolving heat of his palm. He veered in, spreading Daryl apart with one hand before steadying flush against him, his touch causing Daryl to spring up and freeze up, as if he'd been suddenly stunned.

"A bit familiar, is it," Shane hissed, kneeing both of Daryl's thighs far aside. "And look at you," he leered. "All hushed up and anxious."

He pressed forward. Slowly at best, now that Daryl had flagged against him. Shane watched him. How his hands balled uselessly into fists, how he tried so hard to hide his face over with the tangled knot-whorls of his hair, his breathing quick, rabbit-like, as if he knew full well what was coming.

Should know what was coming, now that Shane had managed to fuck into him by the first difficult inch, spreading him through and around the initial breadth of his cock-length.

A noise. Like pain. But Shane did not desist. He skewed farther in, snagging up Daryl's shirt till the entire plain of his back went bared, all scars and flaws and ink. Daryl shivered from under, not at all clinching in nor resisting.

Shane sniggered, wiping dry blood from his nose.

"What, your brother teach you this too?" His tone was gruff, heavy with lust as he pistoned in with his hip, another inch whelmed from between them. He tensed. Feeling the coil of an imminent orgasm twisting like spark in his pelvis. "Or was it daddy," he jeered. "While mommy cooked up skag in the kitchen and did nothing?"

Now, Daryl stirred. But only enough to have moved his head inward, as if helplessly attempting to bottle up the ells of his rage, or maybe his shame, burying his face, in turn, deep into the black cushion beneath him. Daryl's fists went bone-white from behind him. His body rigid in place, if not for the vicious onrush of Shane's incessant fucking.

And from that hour onward, Daryl made no kith of movement, nor did he worm athwart to fight it. And though he choked down desperately upon the occasional gasp or mortifying moan that at times slipped out and betrayed him, he did not rouse, nor did he buck against Shane's merciless onfall, which now battered entrenched.

And when at last Shane sunk into him once and completely, feigning with the swannish curve of his spine some mock at affection, Daryl bit down on his lip hard enough to make it bleed, the instant Shane had reached down and pushed his head low in its place, once more picking up speed.

He pummeled in, each thrust reeling the truck from below them. Time slowed and then stretched, the haunting quiescence of the nearby wood marred apart midst the frenetic resound of Shane's fucking. And not once did he fall into pause, not until he hastened amid the space of a few final seconds, bucking inward and harshly, filling Daryl with the slew of his spent.

It took him only a few moments:

For Shane to pull out in a heaving flux, looking below, there where his seed driveled thick from out of Daryl's hole, a white sheen that now pooled itself lewdly towards the inner-soft of his thigh.

All went grim afore Shane's vision.

Just as it all went crashing.

oOo

At first, Shane's hand went to grasp up at his own mouth, tightening.

Blood gone cold, as if he'd only just realized the full scope of his actions.

His eyes bleared, thoughts reeling. And it wasn't long until he turned his back, his hands cinched upon his hips before he started pacing.

Daryl himself lay unmoving, soundless. Though when Shane peered once from behind him, he saw that his eyes were blue and open. That his breathing had steadied, almost calm. Almost distant. As if he weren't really there. Not truly.

Shane took a fitful breath, his heartbeat racing. And sure, the highway was empty and entirely had been, but the very real possibility that someone, anyone, could have known or heard or seen—

Shane's chest constricted, his fingertips freezing.

He cursed wildly through teeth, then scanned once at all plausible directions surrounding them. His bones felt stiff, his face rising pale with panic. And only after a long and drawn out moment of frantically re-assuaging himself did he at last find respite enough to stride forward. Bestial, and over to Daryl, leaning over on top of him with all of the seven oceans of his weight and snarling rancor.

"You say a word," he grit, "a fucking fraction of a whisper. I will kill you."

He reached, tangling his fist into the back of Daryl's hair, yanking rearward.

"And not just you," he fleered. "See, I will find your crackhead brother, and I will blow his fucking head off. Understand? Ain't no one gonna miss you." He paused, winded. "And Rick. I reckon we could both coincide, that you'll be keeping your dirty little paws off, or I will get you. Right here, like this, and I will make sure there ain't nothin left of you."

He stood then, unlatching the cuffs from Daryl's wrists and pushing him towards the hedge of the byway.

Upon it, Shane did not linger.

He circled over and climbed onto the other side of his truck, re-enlivening the ignition and speeding off, disappearing fast into the opposite distance.

oOo

Wednesday struck.

Quiet and grey as all of the others.

Except now his mind felt to have suddenly gathered, unclouding his thoughts.

And it didn't take him long, boot-laces half in hand, for Rick to decide on confronting Lori at last.

He uncarded his phone, punching in numbers. And on the very first ring, to his candid surprise, Lori had answered.

"Rick?"

Her voice was softer. As if perhaps she'd just woken.

"Lori…" was all Rick could mutter.

He stood, watching the wall with one hand clasped loose on his hip.

She heard to have sat up on the other end, the tousle of bed-cloth shuffling like static through the low buzz of the line.

"Rick," she repeated. "What—"

"It's his, isn't it," Rick said, quick and plain. "The baby."

A long silence betook them. And in Rick's head, he could see almost clearly Lori's palm go up to rest at her mouth, the jump of her breathing swelling on the fragile jolt of her chest. For a moment, Rick wished he could kiss her there. Wished he could just go and hold her, could just kiss it all away—

"That...That asshole," she rasped, catching air in her lungs through the fall of each word. "Heavens," she whispered. Fainter this time, enough that Rick knew there were brimming tears in her eyes. "I...I don't know, Rick. I don't know—"

"You love him, don't you."

She didn't deny it. Not for a long while. Still, the stifled sound of her weeping was enough of a genuine answer.

"I think I'll…" Rick started, though for a second he could not actually speak, now that his chest had begun to feel too sore and too heavy. He blinked away whatever might have been there, clearing his throat gently. "I think I'll stop by the house soon," he managed. "Grab my things."

"Rick, wait," Lori wheezed. "Please—"

But Rick did not wait. He hung up, swiping the call dead.

oOo