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The stained glass window across from them is splintered, jagged cracks bisecting the body of Christ, and Glenn wonders if somewhere God is sitting in judgement on what they are doing here, in His house. It's a ridiculous notion. There is no more hallowed ground, no difference between the sacred and the profane.
There is nothing holy about the warm breath ghosting against his neck, no hand of the divine in the rough, calloused palm that skims lightly over his dick. There is nothing but the cold touch of the sacristy wall at his back, the sure heated weight of Daryl pushing into him, the empty broken gaze of a dead God.
Glenn arches up, hooks his leg more firmly at Daryl's hip to draw him in. It is not like the first time, two months after the prison walls were breached, three weeks after Maggie was pulled down, mouth open, there and alive and perfect one moment and then blanketed in a cover of dead flesh. Glenn had run toward her then, had made it halfway across the yard before Daryl tackled him, dirt in his mouth and tiny pebbles grating into his skin.
Glenn hated him for it.
Now he bites his lip to keep from whimpering himself, sees Daryl's eyes flick quickly to his in warning. They must be quiet, so quiet; though they secured the perimeter there are always walkers, always, an endless stream of walking dead that rot but just don't rot enough. And there is Rick and T and Andrea and the others, playing house for a night (or a week or a month) in the house at the back of the property, where a minister once wrote empty platitudes for the sinners who now stumble through his town on decaying limbs.
When Daryl's mouth fastens on his skin, just below the collar of his shirt, Glenn closes his eyes. And when Daryl's cock finds that spot, just there, just right, Glenn's hands clench at Daryl's shoulders and he bucks against him, involuntary spasms that somehow match the steady tempo of Daryl's hand on his dick, and for a moment he forgets about the need for silence, forgets about the dead town and the dead state and the dead world, doesn't know anything but this, blinding pleasure and release and Daryl keeping him whole.
Glenn tells himself that it doesn't mean anything, not when Daryl rests their foreheads together, their lips so close that they are sharing breath, and cards his fingers through his hair while they pant together in the aftermath, one side of his mouth just quirking upward. Not when Daryl peels himself away and he shivers, because it's only the cold air suddenly replacing Daryl's heated skin and not anything more than that. Not when Daryl cleans him up and puts him back together and they walk outside, silent, shoulders brushing, coming apart only when the night air brushes their faces and cools the sweat on their skin.
In the days to come he will tug his collar up to hide the bruise of Daryl's lips on his collarbone, and Daryl will wear T-shirts to cover the smudged marks of fingertips on his shoulders. He will learn to make arrows, sitting in the yard, in the shade of the steeple of the church of an absent God. When he returns from his supply runs Daryl will not say a word but his shoulders will straighten and his step will lighten and he will nod, once, before returning to his conversation with Rick.
Glenn knows all of this as they approach the rectory, the muted voices of Andrea and Lori just barely audible from within, Daryl side-glancing him as he walks up the steps. In the days to come he will remind himself that it doesn't mean anything, because love in a dying world only means heartache and loss.
He will be lying.