"Hey hon." Glenn greeted Daryl when he walked into their three bedroom house. The man walked into the living room and flopped down on the sofa with a sigh. Glenn dog eared his place in his book and plopped down in front of him. Glenn took off his boots one at a time.
"Ohhh baby...that feels good." Daryl said with a sigh as Glenn worked his thumbs into the arch of his foot. "Thanks babe, I needed that." Daryl smiled at the man he'd been living with for the last year. "So what did you do today?"
"Well, I got off of work at 2 when the power went out. I went over to Amanda's to borrow some books from her. Ellis, Nick, and I shot the shit for a little while when Amanda went over to Rick's to help him in the garden. I came home and worked in the garden until about half an hour ago. The tomatoes and corn are looking good." Glenn replied, he moved to the other foot. "How was work?"
"Long and boring." Daryl told him.
In the last year since the end of the zombie apocalypse the world hadn't really bounced back. Those that survived lived off the land but in suburban communities. The remaining members of their camp had settled in a town near Savannah, Georgia on the coast. They all worked, Rick was still a cop, Glenn worked in the doctor's office, Daryl worked on construction, and Andrea and Dale were teachers. They had made friends in the community, their neighbors were a couple named Nick and Ellis who lived with Ellis' sister Amanda who was a coroner when the Z-Day happened. Amanda was a doctor who usually worked with Glenn and was training him and Nick as nurses and EMTs. The five of them, being neighbors, had become friends pretty quickly and Glenn had introduced Rick to Amanda and the widower soon became smitten with her.
"Hey, the movie night in the park is still on, you want to go?" Glenn asked his boyfriend as he finished his foot rub.
"What's playing?" Daryl asked.
"Um...I think it's a double feature True Grit and Unforgiven..." Glenn told him. "Want to go or are you too tired?"
"Yeah sure, let me shower and eat first." Daryl said as he got up. Even after one year, it still amazed him how domesticated Glenn had made him. Before Z-Day he had been a loner going from woman to woman in a string of one night stands but he guessed surviving the zombie apocalypse can change a man and his habits.
"We can bring our food and eat there." Glenn told him as Daryl walked back into their room.
"Sure kid." Daryl hollered back at him. He could hear Glenn get up and move to the kitchen. He stripped out of his sweaty clothes and got into the shower. A few minutes later he heard Glenn open the door and he joined him. Daryl turned and kissed his lover. "We'll be late if we start anything." He warned Glenn but his hands were already roaming his body.
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"Honey, you can save the seeds from that arugula." Amanda told her boyfriend who was kneeling in the dirt in the raised flower bed in his front yard weeding. "Here, we'll put it in this old Soba juice bottle." Amanda wrapped a sheet around the small bush, cut it down, and shook it. She dumped the seeds and pods and other debris into a fine strainer laying in a bowl. She shook the strainer until the seeds were separated.
"What do we plant now? It's going to be fall soon." Rick asked her as he sat down next to her, watching her pour the seeds down a funnel into the clean and labeled bottle.
"Well, we'll plant kale, cabbage, and spinach tomorrow." Amanda told him as she looked in the notebook she had all her notes and information about gardening along with recipes, knitting patterns, and so on in it. "What else...oh peas and broccoli."
"What about potatoes?" Rick asked her.
"No, we're going to put those in the root cellar and save them for winter. Well...most of them." She told him as she picked up her harvest basket. "Come on, we need to harvest the cucumbers before the movie night in the park." She handed her boyfriend a basket. He did as he was told and started to fill the basket.
Rick was lucky that Glenn introduced him to Amanda that early spring when they came to Salvation. Amanda was also on a city council board with him and they started spending more time together. Then when winter came she brought two baskets of food that lasted the small family about a month. Rick had fallen in love with her by the time winter ended and had been with her ever since. Carl and Sophia loved her too. She was good with kids probably because she had helped raise her younger brother Ellis.
"What are we going to do with them?" He asked her as he watched his basket fill up after awhile. Amanda placed the last of her harvest into her own basket.
"Pickle them." Amanda told him. "We can wash them tonight and to it tomorrow. I need to make us all dinner for tonight."
"Alright, I'll wash them, you go get ready." Rick said, Amanda gave him a smile before going back into the house to start cooking.
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Nick looked over at his sleeping lover on their bed as he buttoned up his shirt. The kid had gone down for a nap when Glenn had left and Amanda had shuffled off to Rick's place. The 25-year-old rolled over and draped his left arm over his eyes, the gold bands shining in the low light of the sun coming in through the shades.
He remembered the roundabout way he proposed to Ellis. It had been the night after they found Amanda. He was sitting with Ellis, alone, in their tent in the camp. Ellis looked up at him and smiled.
"The only way this day could get any better would be... I don't know...settling down for once, like Amanda always wanted me to. She always said I'd make someone very happy one day." Ellis joked in that southern drawl Nick was starting to love.
"Then why don't we?" Nick was ready to marry the other man. He was insanely lucky he had survived the hell on earth with Ellis, the man he had fallen in love with. He took the ring off his middle finger of his right hand and put it on Ellis' ring finger. "Will you marry me Ellis?" He whispered to him. Ellis' eyes went wide as looked down at the ring and back up at Nick who was holding his breath waiting for his answer.
"Ah' course I'll marry you Nick!" Ellis said before pulling the older man down into a kiss.
Now Nick looked down at his sleeping husband in awe. He would never have thought he would get married again, much less to a redneck man 13 years his junior living in a three bedroom house in a suburb in Georgia. He loved his Ellis more than anything and living in their sleepy town had grown on him. He leaned down and kissed the younger man on the lips.
"Ellis, baby, it's time to get up." Nick said as he shook him but it didn't work. "Ellis!" He shouted and slapped him in the chest. Ellis shot up and stared at his husband sleepily.
"Wut? Nick?" Ellis rubbed the sleep out of his eyes. He looked at his husband dressed in sneakers, jeans, and the same blue shirt he had been wearing when they met. He loved that shade of blue on his man, it was part of many important memories for them. "Babe, wut are yuh wearin that shirt for?" He asked as he got out of the bed, turning away to pick up a shirt from the chair in the corner. Nick came up behind him and wrapped his arms around the young man and kissed the curve of his shoulder.
"You know you love this shirt." He said, nibbling the lobe of his ear. "I was wearing it when I took you for the first time."
"When you said 'I love you' for the first time." Ellis said, placing his hands on his.
"I still do." He said and he knew the kid was smiling.
"I love you too Nick." Nick smiled into his husband's shoulder.
"Come on Overalls. It's time to go." Ellis grinned at the old nick-name. Nick gave him another kiss before moving away. "I made us dinner so we can take it with us." Ellis nodded, they had been taking their dinner every week. Nick joked that it was their 'dinner-and-a-movie' date. Which made Ellis realize they had gotten married and never gone on a date once which he found a little odd. Nick took his mind off of that by romancing his young husband when they got home. Amanda had agreed to spend the night else when Nick told her his plans.
Nick grabbed the basket, an old metal shopping basket, from the counter and the quilt from the sofa before leaving the Sunderland-Cravati residence for the park like everyone else in the tight knit community.
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"Hey guys! What's up?" Ellis greeted Daryl and Glenn when they joined the others in front of the large screen in the park. The couple greeted the other couple as Amanda, Rick, Carl, and Sophia joined them and laid the quilt down on the other side of Ellis and Nick.
"Nothing much, same old same old." Daryl said as he laid a blanket down next to the other couple. "How's the garden?"
"You know how Nick and Amanda are." Ellis said with a smile. Since they had been some of the first to settle the town the household had gotten one of the biggest lots in Salvation, GA, a full acre and a half. Nick and Amanda had one of the best homestead gardens in the town. Amanda had grown the best fruit, strawberries, several kinds of apples, and oranges. Nick had a large crop of tobacco, corn, and grain. And Ellis had taken care of the chickens and goats on their land. "It's about time to harvest. How's your crop doing?"
"Corn and tomatoes are doing fine." Daryl told him. He turned to Rick. "How's your crop doing?" Rick groaned.
"Yeah, I had to go help him a few times." Amanda told them with a grin. "Rick's hopeless."
"Yeah, looks like you'll just have to marry her Rick if you want enough food to feed your family." Nick teased him with a smile. Amanda swatted her brother-in-law. "What? It's true. Look at how much food you made for the kids and Rick." Nick pointed to the basket full of snacks and canned food she wanted Rick to take home.
"What?" Sophia asked her. "You're getting married?"
"Don't listen to him Sophia, honey, he's just teasing Rick." Amanda told her. She took out an old 2 gallon milk jug she filled with homemade lemonade from her basket and shook it until the sugar was mixed in. "That reminds me..." She dug into her basket and pulled out a quart jar full of something red. "Here's the strawberry jam I promised you." She handed it over to Glenn.
"Hey thanks!" Glenn replied. He put it in their own basket and settled down in front of Daryl who wrapped his arms around his chest. The screen flickered and the movie started. Amanda sat down with Rick and the kids and handed out homemade potato chips and popcorn to them. Glenn watched, a little jealous. Nobody cooked like Amanda. Ellis and Nick were lucky to live with her. Daryl and Glenn and Rick were lucky that she decided it would be best if she taught them how to cook so she wasn't spending all her free time canning and cooking for them like she was doing. "We still on for Saturday?" Glenn asked her. She was teaching Rick and Glenn how to bake bread, make tomato sauce, and canning tomatoes since her tomato crop was in.
"Totally." Amanda told them. "I don't feel like trying to feed you two and Rick and the kids during the winter this year." She said with a grin as she took two napkin wrapped sandwiches out of the basket and handed one to Rick. Glenn was still jealous that Rick got a sandwich made of homemade bread, cheese made from scratch, and tomatoes and shallots. The kids had homemade PB&J.
The group of friends ate as they waited for the sun to go down. Glenn sat between Daryl's leg and lay against his chest as the sky darkened and the movie started to play on the screen. Glenn fell asleep half way through Unforgiven wrapped in his lover's arms.
All of the things he endured surviving the zombie apocalypse was totally worth it for this. He thought as he fell asleep.