Before the outbreak Glenn would have spent nearly an hour pulling himself out of bed and shaking the sleep off. He would set his alarm four times, fifteen minutes apart. The first to get him just groggy enough that when the second went off he'd be able to sit up before laying back down and putting a pillow over his face. The third would remind him to toss the pillow aside and stretch his arms, kick the blanket off enough that the cooler air in the apartment would make him uncomfortable. The fourth would be the one he finally climbed out of bed for, followed by a long yawning walk to the bathroom to actually start his day.

Back at the quarry camp he'd gotten his morning ritual down to a half-hour when he had the luxury to spend that long waking up. Fifteen when he didn't. No alarms were around to help him wake up, but the sound of people stomping around and the light of the sun filtering through his tent were a decent enough substitute.

The last three nights on the road with Daryl he'd learned to wake up as soon as Daryl shook him up for his watch shift. He was still groggy, but he didn't take his time. The reaction he'd gotten from his friend the first night on the road when he'd murmured 'five more minutes' had beat the lesson into his head right quick. Daryl had very happily woken him up to a crossbow in the face and a hand muffling his mouth.

When he got up, all he did was turn himself over so he could sit with his back to the headboard. He didn't trade spots with Daryl, who laid himself down so his front was curled in toward Glenn. After setting his crossbow on the floor, of course. He didn't like sleeping with his back to him. Which puzzled Glenn more than a little. He'd honestly thought that Daryl would be more prone to sleeping so he could dangle one arm over the side of the bed so he could grab his weapon without turning over.

Glenn grabbed his gun from the side table and brought one knee up, propped his right arm on it with the gun loose in his grip. He reached out and took Daryl's hand again, gave it a squeeze, then let it go. He fully expected Daryl to pull it back to himself and curl up tightly into a ball same as he had been the last couple nights. But Daryl surprised him: he didn't pull his hand away.

He let it lay there as his breathing evened out and he drifted swiftly into sleep. Daryl was well practiced at that whole waking up on a moment's notice thing. To the point that he could also pick and choose when to let his body shut down. And he'd just done that, this time leaving his hand where Glenn had pulled it to.

Glenn reached back out and tentatively curled his fingers into Daryl's palm. He didn't entwine their fingers just yet. He wasn't sure if that was going to be allowed. If leaving his hand out was simply a show of trust in the only way Daryl knew how and trying for anything more would cause him to close up again.

He wasn't unobservant. He wasn't blind, either. He knew Daryl had trouble reaching out to others, both figuratively and physically. The man was practically a walking stereotype some days. More so with Merle around. But it was obvious, after basically a week in his company, that Daryl used that to keep people at arm's length.

Glenn let his fingers rest in Daryl's palm as he shook himself out of the last of his sleep and focused on watching the window. He let his nails scratch lightly at the skin there in a manner that must have tickled because Daryl's hand closed up suddenly. Both stopping the movement and trapping his pinky and thumb. The man didn't wake up, but it took a while for his hand to relax again, fingers flexing out as he sighed in his sleep.

Glenn didn't take advantage of the action for the rest of the night. He just let his hand lay there, over Daryl's. Somewhere close to holding it, but not quite. It was nice. Not as nice as the stubble on Daryl's chin had been when it scratched his knuckles at the start of the night. But still nice.

He smiled at the memory. It hadn't been that long ago, but it already felt like it'd been too long. It was probably as close to a kiss as Glenn would ever get from the other man. And he knew it was stupid of him to be thinking like that in the first place.

It had been so intimate, though. At least from his end. Daryl most likely hadn't thought of it that way. As far as Glenn knew, the other man had just wanted the luxury of biting his thumb without having to switch hands and give up his grip on his crossbow.

Morning came slowly and Glenn was thankful for that. Sometimes five hours could feel too short. Of course, sometimes it could feel too long, but that was usually when walkers were around and everything felt like it took too long to do. No, that night, the slow meander of time was a nice reprieve. It gave him time to think things over. And not just about how good looking Daryl was when his face relaxed and the worry lines disappeared.

Since it didn't seem like Lee and Clementine and the others would be back, they'd be leaving before dawn so they were on the road before the sun was up. Not enough time in the dark to worry about walkers. Just enough that they wouldn't waste the daylight hours. They'd be getting shorter and shorter in the next few weeks and if the two of them were going to get south to Key West before winter really hit, they needed all the hours they could get. There was no telling what the roads were going to be like. Only that what should have been a two-day trip (at most) would likely take a week. If they were lucky.

Glenn didn't count on them being lucky.

He also didn't count on Daryl wanting to take the short route. He was going to assume that once they hit the coast Daryl would want to stay near it and take a leisurely trip down. So long as the walker herds allowed for that. And whatever other survivors were out there.

When Glenn finally woke Daryl up for the day the first words out of his mouth were, "We're going to need a map."

Daryl rolled himself off the bed, dropping his arm down to grab his crossbow as he scratched at his stomach. He sniffed loudly and nodded, "Okay."

"There's a couple bookstores in town I know about," Glenn said as he did a sweep through the room for the few items he'd pulled out of his backpack the night before. They were put up quickly and the backpack slung over his shoulders.

"So what's the problem?" Daryl asked as the crossbow went over his shoulder and he got his hands on the bike.

Glenn opened the door, doing a quick visual check for walkers past the fence, "The last time I was further inside town I almost died after being trapped in a drug store. It's pretty much walker central."

Daryl gave him a quick nod and they rolled the bike out of the room. After Glenn shut the door behind them and moved off to get the dumpster-door open, he said, "You used to live out here."

"Yeah," Glenn agreed. "I did."

"Your place in walker central?"

Glenn stopped and looked at him, surprised at the question. He hadn't thought about his place – the crappy apartment was, well crappy – since the start of everything. It wasn't in a great part of town, but it also wasn't in a very urban area either. Most people hadn't stuck around there when things went crazy and it had gotten deserted fast. It might be a good place to use as a base of operations for a few days while they did runs. A place to store the bike if nothing else.

"No," he grinned at Daryl. "We could camp there for a day or two. I still have my keys."

Daryl grinned back, looking mighty pleased with himself. Glenn liked that look on him. There was a lot more confidence in him than he was used to seeing.

"Hey, hold on a second," Glenn said before Daryl could start pulling the dumpster-door closed. "I want to leave a note. In case they come back."

Daryl's smile turned into a frown, "What if another group finds it?"

"Don't worry, I won't say where we'll be in town," he answered, pulling his hat off and fiddling with it before he walked off. "I just want to let them know I was here. Still alive."

Daryl gave him a slow nod and he hurried across the lot to the RV. There were crayons on the ground, near the drawing, so he grabbed one of those before ducking inside the vehicle. He rifled through the cabinets quickly, settling on using the roll of wax paper still tucked away on one of the high shelves.

Glenn left two notes. Both were hastily scrawled out and one had less of a chance of finding it's owner than the other, but if he was going to leave one, he might as well leave the other. The first was addressed to Clementine and it was rolled up and put in the hole at the back of his hat. Just a short hello and that he'd passed through while they were out. That he was heading for the coast and then south. And that she could keep his hat.

The second note he asked Clementine to leave for his friend in a post-script on hers. That one was to Merle. If the man somehow found his way south to Macon, he wanted there to be something to guide him back to his brother. He knew it was a really, really, really long shot, but it didn't hurt anything to leave it.

Once that was done and the hat and the notes were left inside the engine of the RV where they were sure to be spotted if anyone took a look inside, Glenn helped Daryl close up the doors to the lot. Then he climbed on behind his friend and they took off into the city.

…

Glenn's old place didn't look all that changed from when he'd last seen it. He'd basically cut and run, packed his backpack and stuffed it in his car before heading into the center of town. He'd gotten caught there, in the drug store, with the others just days after everything went to shit. And damn if it didn't all go down the toilet fast.

The apartment was little more than a closet with a toilet and a kitchenette in the middle of a single story building that liked to pretend it had class. All the front doors faced out toward the parking lot and all the back doors, tiny little sliders attached to tiny little concrete patios, faced inward to a courtyard that doubled as a picnic area. It served no other purpose but from how the landscaping (and that was a generous descriptor) had been done, it had, at one time far in the past, held a small pool. One long since filled in with dirt to avoid the cost of maintaining it.

The door was still locked when they got to it and the noise of the bike drew only three walkers from the surrounding area, so it seemed safe enough as camping spots went. Daryl took out the geeks and Glenn had to dig his house keys out of the bottom of his backpack. It was a pretty surreal experience, all in all. Going 'home' after two months away while his best friend killed zombies behind him.

"Just a normal Tuesday at the end of the world," He laughed to himself.

Glenn walked the bike inside, not bothering with his flashlight since there was enough sunlight coming through the sliding glass door. It was, thankfully, not broken. Which likely meant no scavengers had been through the complex yet. And if that were the case, then he and Daryl could work their way through it for supplies with a decent chance of finding more than scraps.

Daryl followed him inside and shut the door. Locked it again. Then he grunted, "Nice digs."

Glenn shot him an incredulous look, certain the man was making a joke at his expense. But from the expression on Daryl's face, he was being sincere. And he was also feeling offended at how Glenn was looking at him. He opened his mouth and Glenn cut him off with a bright smile, "Thanks."

That caught Daryl off guard. Glenn's grin widened, "That's the first time anyone's said that and meant it. The few people that did come over. I didn't have a lot of visitors."

Daryl looked down at his feet for second, shrugging a single shoulder, "A place like this, all to yourself, it's a lot better than most of the places my family ever owned. Not as much to the yard, though."

"Couldn't afford a place with a yard," Glenn said back, moving to the slider and looking out at it. "Though I guess I could claim it all as mine. Now. No one else is around to."

He snorted, then threw his head back in a real belly laugh, "You know, I never really thought about it before, but we could pretty much claim any place we wanted as ours. We could find one of those castles or really expensive multi-million dollar mansions and take them. We could literally live in a palace."

Daryl laughed with him, shaking his head as he poked around in the kitchen area, "If we find one with a drawbridge and a moat we might even be able to protect it."

"We don't need to protect the whole thing," Glenn said, thoughts going back to a few of his old video games. The shooters, mostly. Portal. "Just a few rooms. Trap the rest. Make it a maze of death for anyone and anything that tries to get to us."

"A maze of death?" Daryl's voice took on that 'you fucking with me' tone as he moved on from the kitchen to the bedroom, flashlight out to get a good look around.

"I will have you know, I have watched every Home Alone movie and almost every Jackie Chan movie," Glenn answered, puffing his chest up like it was something to be truly proud of. "I know how to trap a house."

Daryl snorted, "Whatever you say."

Glenn grinned at him and pulled the back door open, then grabbed one of the four baseball bats still hung on the walls. The one signed by Chipper Jones and once the pride of his very small collection. "None of the sliders are broken in. There might be walkers in a few of the other apartments, but it doesn't look like this place has been gone through yet. We can look for the bookstores tomorrow. Today, I think we should clear this place out."

"Sounds like a plan," Daryl agreed, hefting his crossbow and gesturing for Glenn to lead the way. "Your city, your call."

It was nice having someone watching his back that trusted him. Looked to him to lead the way. Really nice. Made him feel less like a kid that got on everyone's nerves despite all the runs he did and more like he was someone worth respecting. He'd never really gotten that before. Not during the time they'd been at the quarry and not in the life he'd had prior to the outbreak. No one had really respected him before.

"So hey," he stopped outside the glass slider of his old neighbor's house, the one that fed stray cats, and knocked on it. "I wanted to say thanks."

Daryl cocked an eyebrow at him, leveling his crossbow at the door as the walker that used to be a very old and very lonely man came stumbling into the glass.

"For sticking with me. And being my friend," Glenn smiled, then hefted his bat and swung at the glass like he was going for a home run.