Ryker's Guide (Spicy)

Rivals

Ryker

Sometimes being a vampire was a pain in the ass. Take the never needing to sleep part. It was usually good for efficiency, but it made driving oneself to the point of oblivion rather hard. It meant he didn't have nightmares, but there were still times when memories would creep in and take him, haunt him. Not as much anymore. But in those moments, he sometimes felt something in him stutter, a wave threatening to wash away all his peace and happiness. He could feel those dark memories gathering inside.

Ryke used to just drink it all away, had fallen back into that for several months as he shadowed Carbry to keep the man from plunging too far into his desperation and pain. But he had also turned his back on his mate for several reasons: out of guilt, out of self hate. For whatever reason, he had withdrawn from Daryl and sought out the punishment of keeping the man he'd failed functioning, never thinking beyond his own pain to the fact that he was also punishing Daryl.

And even after all that was over, after Carbry had been reunited with his mate and they had begun to hobble together this broken world, Daryl still had never really raged at him for it. Probably never would, though it had left an empty space between them that they were now bridging.

It was a space that Ryker only felt these days when the cowboy was away from him, like today. He had arrived back early from India, only to find that Daryl was in another city doing something else. Work proposals or something. According to Eliza, Daryl had done a proposal here a while ago, and it had gone so well that the company had flown him to Seattle to give a pitch to the main board.

He hadn't even known Daryl was thinking of branching out from the contracts Knight Corp had given him. Ryker had just assumed the work stuff Daryl was doing involved more contracts from Carbry. Then he had realized that he had never asked his mate about it. He'd just assumed, which contributed to a nagging kernel of guilt within him. Things were getting so much better between the two of them, but they still had work to do.

With a snarl, he punched the fighting dummy in front of him, hearing the snap of metal as the thing's head came flying off. He had been training for hours now, first with a group of new hires, and then by himself when they had eventually left to seek out rest during the daylight hours. Ryker and Daryl weren't broken anymore, and they had made great leaps and bounds in building back up to what they were before. But Ryker knew there was still that argument Daryl wouldn't have, an argument that Ryker was too much of a coward for. An argument about Daryl going off and doing his own thing without telling him even though Ryke knew it wasn't his place to get upset and worry because he himself had done the same thing to his mate back when Meriwa died.

"You going to finish any time soon?" Mer's voice broke through his concentration, pulling his gaze to where she stood on the edge of the mats, holding a fighting staff in one of her hands. "Or are you going to break all of the toys here first?"

Ryker grinned, covering the slight uncertainty he still felt. He had been with her...a lot. She was one of Daryl's best friends and Car's mate. The experiment they were partaking in was fun for the four of them, and he knew her quite intimately on several levels. But they didn't spend a lot of time alone, not as much as they should, anyway. Especially considering how she'd confided that she didn't think he loved her as much as he did Car and Daryl.

The realization that she felt that way hurt, as did the knowledge that was ever-present in the back of his mind, the understanding that it was Ryker's own fuck up that had gotten her killed in the first place.

"You know how to use that? Or is it just a cane to walk your undead corpse around without falling apart?" Ryker smirked and turned toward the rack of weapons, feigning a lack of concern as he stalked to the staves and hefted one, hearing her step onto the mat and begin twirling her weapon.