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He’s three days late making it home.
It’s just long enough for Carol to start worrying. Daryl knows how to handle himself, of course, and he’s with Aaron and Maggie, a competent little group. But they hadn’t been going far, just scoping out the neighborhoods a few towns over, seeing if there was anything left that was worthwhile.
And three people is, indeed, a little group.
A day late, she’d understand. Bad weather, engine trouble, an especially good haul, any of it could cause a slight delay. Three days, though?
The only thing that stops her from taking a car out after them is Ezekiel. When talking her down doesn’t work, he effectively forbids her leaving—not that that would keep her there for long. Another day and she'd just run off after her man, damn everything else to hell.
But then they’re pulling in through the gates of New Alexandria, Aaron behind the wheel of a tanker truck, Maggie next to him in the cab and Daryl bringing up the rear on his bike. The stone that has settled in her stomach over the past few days just… dissipates.
Logically, she knows she should be overjoyed about the tanker. Gallons and gallons and gallons of gasoline—God knows where they found it, but the community won’t have to worry about fuel for a while now. Other people are celebrating over it, clapping Aaron on the shoulders as he climbs down out of the rig, yelling happy thanks at Maggie and Daryl both.
All she can see, though, is Daryl. Home, safe and uninjured as far as she can see. She’s running for him, grabbing at him and pulling him into a hug before he’s even stepped off his bike. He tenses up for a split second before melting into her, resting his head against her shoulder, face tipped into the crook of her neck. His breath is warm against her skin, and his long hair tickles her cheeks.
“Carol,” he mumbles, quiet, and there’s a tone to his voice. He’s not a fan of PDA’s—Carol’s pretty sure they trigger some sort of insecurity fight or flight response in the back of his mind—and while he usually tolerates hugging, she knows she’s not being subtle. She knows she’s radiating love and relief and happiness to anyone who might look.
So she lets him go and steps back, looking him over. He’s all tangled hair and dirty clothes and dark circles under his eyes. He looks like shit, but he’s home, and he’s perfect.
“Got held up with the tanker,” he tells her. She tries to resist fussing over him, but she can’t keep herself from brushing some flyaways out of his face. He swallows then continues, “Couldn’t get her to start, but we weren’t about to go leavin’ that gas. Took us a while to find parts.”
“I’m just glad you’re back,” she tells him. Then, “You look exhausted.”
He grins at her, just a small thing, a corner of his mouth lifting the tiniest bit. “Were tryin’ to get back fast as we could,” he says. “Didn’t want people comin’ after us.”
“When was the last time you slept?” she asks, frowning. “When was the last time you ate?”
He grunts at her, shrugging, which translates vaguely to I’m not going to tell you because you won’t like the answer. She sighs.
“Then why don’t you get to the cabin and take care of yourself,” she suggests. Then, gesturing vaguely toward the others, toward the tanker, “I’ll help them here.”
He doesn’t even argue, just nods and mutters, “Gotta put the bike away first.”
And he must really feel terrible if he isn’t fighting her over going back to the cabin instead of staying out to help. He’s probably been awake ever since they found that damn truck, and who knows how long ago that was? He’s maybe had a quick nap, a quick snack, but probably nothing more. She’s been on those sorts of runs before, and she knows how it is. They aren’t young anymore, and they don’t bounce back as quickly as they used to. He needs a hot meal and some good sleep.
Incredibly, he leans in to kiss her on the cheek before rolling forward on his bike and riding off toward their cabin. She watches him until he disappears behind a row of houses, then turns around to help the others.
~*~
It’s right at the edge of sunset when she finally manages to escape her responsibilities and get back to the cabin. Get back to him.
He’s left a trail behind himself on his way through their home. Dirty boots by the front door, his jacket thrown over the back of the couch, a used bowl and cup laid in the kitchen sink. Upstairs, his beard trimmer left out by the bathroom sink, the toilet seat left up, his filthy clothes in a pile next to the shower.
She rolls her eyes—grown-ass man, apparently still can’t clean up after himself—then bends down to collect his clothes and heads towards their bedroom.
He’s there laid out on his belly with his bath towel still wrapped around his hips, looking like he stumbled in from the shower, collapsed onto the bed, then immediately passed out. He’s so soft and vulnerable in that moment, relaxed into the bed, one knee slightly bent, his hair a clean but tangled mess…
Her heart aches a little at the sight.
She tosses his clothes into the hamper then goes to stand by the bed. He’s breathing deep, sleeping deep, doing that almost but not quite snoring thing he does. She’s missed hearing that the past few nights. She’s gotten too used to him being around all the time, too used to him sleeping next to her.
Some part of her is terrified, because this is what she’s been afraid of all along. Knowing, and being known. Going through this, loving and then the inevitable losing. Daryl’s the strongest man she knows, and he’s made it this far, but he bleeds as easy as the rest of them. The marks on his body are testament to that.
She doesn’t know what she’ll do if one day he actually doesn’t come home.
But then, where would she be now had he never been here?
She wants to touch him, run her hands over his back and kiss his neck. Having him in front of her like this—nearly naked, shirtless, his back bared to her—it’s such a rarity. Though he sleeps naked, he almost always keeps his shirt on when they have sex. Sometimes he even keeps his jeans on, too, just unbuckles and unzips and shoves them down enough to get the job done.
Carol can count on one hand the number of times they’ve fucked naked.
She understands why he’s reticent about it. At least from an objective standpoint, she understands. She knows his scars, saw them for the first time nearly fifteen years ago while he was lying in that bed in Herschel’s farmhouse. She’d known then, staring down at him all beaten and broken and stitched together, and that was long before they’d ever spoken about any of it.
The scars across his back tell a story all their own.
They’re also beautiful.
She’s never told Daryl this, and she never will. Not only would he probably bristle at the word ‘beautiful,’ but Carol isn’t sure how he would react to something so intertwined with his past suffering and pain being, well, loved. It’s possible he wouldn’t understand what she sees there—strength, survival, perseverance, restoration…
The man she loves.
Her hand lingers over him, inches over that x-mark scar, before she thinks better of it. He’s usually a light sleeper and always wakes on a hair trigger. No telling what’ll happen if she just lays her hand in the middle of his back while he’s this deep under. And she shouldn’t wake him, she knows he needs the sleep, but he’s right here back with her and spread out all sweet across the sheets.
She brushes tangled hair out of his face, pushes it back behind his ear best she can. His eyes snap open as soon as her fingertips brush his cheek, but he doesn’t startle, doesn’t try to get up. She smiles at him while he blinks over at her, clearly still sleepy.
He stretches, toes digging into the mattress, then asks her, “Y’alright?”
“Yeah,” she tells him, quiet. “Just checking in on you.”
“Nnng,” he grunts, nonsensical, and closes his eyes again.
She marvels silently at the fact he doesn’t turn over onto his back, doesn’t cover up with the blanket, doesn’t get up for a shirt… just doesn’t do anything to hide himself. Emboldened by his openness, she ever so gently lays her hand down on the back of his neck. A shiver runs up his spine, shaking him underneath her touch, but he doesn’t move away.
He doesn’t even open his eyes again.
So she lets her hand trail down, rubs her thumb in a circle around that bony knob on the back of his neck, at the top of his spine. She gets another shiver, the muscles in his back quivering beneath his skin, so she runs her palm out along a shoulder blade. She can feel a scar there under her hand, a smooth line cut into his soft skin.
He starts fidgeting, and she knows he’s thinking of an escape, how to best extricate himself from the situation. She frowns, sitting down next to him on the bed, and murmurs, “It’s alright. You can go back to sleep.”
She moves her hand, lays it on the back of his neck again, and he grunts at her like he wants to protest. But when she squeezes gently, working at him, rubbing at sore tired muscles, whatever protest he’d had turns into a low rough groan.
It’s a few minutes before he’s melted into the bed, breathing heavy and deep. Figuring he’s fallen asleep again, she sits back. However, he grunts as soon as she takes her hands away, a drowsy discontent sort of noise. When he turns his head on the pillows to look at her, there’s a glazed-over look in his pretty blue eyes—half asleep and blissed out, relaxed and feeling good. It makes her heart ache in the best sort of way.
“Sorry, I thought you were asleep,” she tells him. He ‘mmph’s at her, closing his eyes. She stares at his face for a second before taking a leap. “Will you let me rub your back?”
He doesn’t answer her at first, stays quiet for a long time. In fact, she thinks he may not answer, may even have truly fallen asleep. But then, finally, he mumbles, “Yeah, I guess. If you wanna.”
She doesn’t answer him verbally, rather just smooths her hands down his spine, all the way down to where his ass is covered by the faded blue towel. He shudders almost violently, one hand reaching up to grab at the pillow underneath his head, so she does it again, soft and slow and soothing. He watches her, hazy blue peeking out from behind his tangled mess of uncombed hair, and she thinks maybe, maybe…
She has her little personal bottle in the bedside table, the stuff that Rosita makes, mostly just aloe vera and lavender oil mixed together. She’d started using it for intercourse back in the beginning, a year or so ago, back when she’d started sleeping with Daryl. Those first couple of times had been, well, uncomfortable, and she’d known it wasn’t Daryl’s fault—at least not in any way that he could help. He’d been considerate and attentive from the very beginning, erring on the side of too gentle in his obvious inexperience.
He’s a bigger man, though, not too long but definitely girthy, and she doesn’t get as wet now as she used to when she was younger. But a little bit of lube and it turns into such a perfect slippery glide, the sort that still surprises her sometimes—the sort that has her desperate and noisy and tugging at his hair, wanting and wanting and wanting…
She figures the little bottle is just oil, clean smelling and easy to warm up in her hands. She reaches over to pull it out of the bedside table, and Daryl grunts, watching her curiously. His brows go all furrowed when he sees what she grabs, and she grins, almost hearing his internal monologue aloud.
What the hell, woman? You can’t wait ‘til tomorrow? Try’na sleep.
She shushes him, pouring some of the oil out on her hands. “Relax,” she tells him, rubbing her hands together to warm them up. “Close your eyes. Go back to sleep.”
And maybe this is turning into something selfish, something she wants as much for herself as for him. Regardless, she lays her hands down on him, running them across his shoulder blades and leaving him shiny with the oil. He shivers while she raises up on her knees, swings a leg over him and settles her weight down slow.
He doesn’t say anything until she’s sitting on his bum, her hands pressing into his shoulders, kneading deep into the muscle. His voice his rough, deep. “What’re you doin’?”
“Giving you a massage,” she says, simple, like this is something she does all the time and doesn’t need to be questioned.
He squirms underneath her, seeming uncomfortable, but then she finds a knot under his skin, his deltoid snarled up from carrying the crossbow in the same position all the time. She digs the heels of her hands into it, slowly working at it. He goes rigid underneath her, a harsh breath punching its way out of him.
“I know,” she murmurs, knowing it must be hurting him. But… “I have it, just relax.”
A second later, and he practically liquifies, a sinful moan escaping him. She can still feel the knot, but the muscle as a whole under her hands feels looser. He groans again, then curses, and finally shoves his face deeper into the pillow, closing his eyes. Carol smiles, her heart melting.
She wanders her way down his back, massaging deep into the muscle, everything from his trapezius to his obliques. She pauses sometimes to just love on his scars, takes the time to rub the oil into his skin, trace her fingertips along the marks. He’s restless at first when she touches them, but the more she pays attention to him, the more she works him and rubs at him, the more he dissolves underneath her, and the less he seems to care about everything else.
At least, the less he seems to care about anything except her and his dick.
It’s so subtle that she doesn’t notice at first, but then she realizes that he’s grinding himself against the mattress all slow and lazy, like maybe he doesn’t even know he’s doing it. She slides her hands down low, digging her thumbs into his Apollo dimples. His moan is filthy, and her belly swoops hot.
“Are you feeling good?” she whispers.
“Mmpf,” he grunts in response, which Carol takes as a yes, judging from the tone.
She swings her leg back over and sits down next to him, her feet curled underneath herself. Then, already knowing what she wants to do, she pats him on the rump and says, “Turn over.”
He does as requested, rolling over all tired and sluggish. The bath towel comes undone as he starfishes out on his back, and because he will forever be a ridiculous man, he grabs at it to cover himself. Like she hadn’t turned him over with the sole objective of getting to his erection.
She tsks at him, taking the towel out of his hands and tossing it aside. He’s left spread out for her, all messy hair and farmer’s tan and hazy blue eyes. His dick is stiff and fat, leaking a little where it’s laying on his belly. She smiles, runs her knuckles up the underside, and asks him, “Is this for me?”
“Dammit, woman,” he mumbles, doing a good job of pretending to be annoyed. “Dontcha got a cucumber you can use’r somethin’?”
She ignores him in favor of licking a delicate line up the underside of his shaft, swirling her tongue around his cockhead, then swallowing him down.
“Jesus fuckin’ Christ,” he chokes out, one hand snapping out a little too suddenly and a little too forcefully to grab her by her hair. She freezes, tensing, but he’s already letting her go, squeezing her shoulder instead and mumbling a hoarse apology.
She reaches to take his hand from her shoulder, threads their fingers together and squeezes, a silent, It’s alright, I know you didn’t mean to.
He doesn’t let go of her hand, keeps it held against his belly while she stays crouched over him and sucks him.
She’s never been particularly good at this, at least she doesn’t think so. Ed was always sure to let her know how horrible she was, and while nowadays she takes everything Ed said with a grain of salt, no one has been exactly complimentary. No one except Daryl, that is, even though she can’t get all of him in her mouth, can’t take him down her throat like she knows men like. She just licks and sucks at what she can, jerks the rest of him in her free hand, and Daryl loses his mind.
She doesn’t know whether he just doesn’t have much basis for comparison, or if it’s the fact it’s her, her mouth on him and her hands on him. She suspects it might be a bit of both.
She suckles at his cockhead before pulling off and looking down at him. He’s even harder now than before, fat and flushed and shiny with her spit. Fucking gorgeous. She’s tempted to take her pants off and just climb on up, but no, not right now. That’s not what this is about.
“I love your cock,” she tells him, before leaning back down and taking him in. The streak of cursing she gets for that is spectacular.
“Christ, woman,” he mumbles, throwing an arm over his face. “Sayin’ shit like that.”
He tastes bitter, precome and salty skin, but he’s fresh from the shower, clean-smelling, his natural musk light and pleasant. The thatch of brown-grey curls around his cock is messy and unruly, not trimmed or tidied in the least. It tickles her nose sometimes, but it’s not unpleasant. It’s just him.
He’s so thick and hot, throbbing between her lips—she should do this more often, she tells herself. She usually doesn’t think about it, doesn’t want to, but the way he feels and the sounds he’s making…
He squeezes her hand and says her name, a warning, “Carol…”
She doesn’t pull off, keeps him warm and wet in her mouth and lets him come across her tongue. He usually stays silent when he climaxes, but this time his grunting and panting is beautifully obscene.
And God, she loves him.
She thinks about spitting into the towel but then does one better and spits his semen back onto his cock. She can’t decide what’s better—watching the pearly white drip down his shaft or listening to his stupefied reaction.
“Jesus,” he says, with feeling. Then, “What the fuck’s got into you?”
And there’s a joke there, teasing to be had, but she meets his orgasm-hazy gaze and answers, “I missed you.”
He gifts her with a smile, one of those gentle soft things that only she gets to see. She leans over, kisses his belly then kisses his chest over his heart.
Eventually, he says, “Guess I should go away more often, then.”
“No. Absolutely not,” she scolds, mock-stern.
He chuckles, reaching out to grab at the front of her jeans. She has to bat him away a few times, determined as he apparently is to undo her flies and return the favor. His eyes are already drooping again, though, and he has that foggy love-drunk look he gets after nighttime sex, the one that means he’ll be asleep in less than five minutes.
“Go back to sleep,” she tells him. “I shouldn’t have woken you up in the first place, but…”
I missed you, and I was so worried I’d lost you.
“M’glad you woke me up,” he says. His eyes drift shut, and he adds, “I’ll make it up t’you in the mornin’.”
“I’ll hold you to that,” she tells him, grinning.
And she sits beside him until he once again falls asleep.