AN: Here we go, another little chapter here. This is a lighter chapter, but we needed it.
I hope you enjoy! Let me know what you think!
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When Michonne came into the cabin, she found Daryl sitting on the couch and staring across the room in front of him. If they'd had a television, she might have simply said he was watching that. He wasn't watching anything, though. He was just staring, and probably thinking about all the things that had been transpiring around them in the past few days.
And it was evident that he'd had the children all day because Hope, or maybe Judith, had styled his hair until it was absolutely lovely. It stuck up in all directions, pinned in place with the multicolored plastic hair clips that Judith preferred to wear over Hope, but both loved to play with.
"You look…" Michonne hesitated when she walked in, her entrance startling Daryl slightly out of his trance and getting her a crooked smile from him a moment later. Two black eyes and he was still a nice sight to her. "So…beautiful," she finished.
He chuckled and reached a hand up, touching at the carefully crafted madness of his hair.
"I feel real pretty," he commented. "Got me a real good imaginary bath too. So I smell just as pretty as I look."
Michonne chuckled and tossed the cigarette packs onto the couch next to Daryl. He looked at them like a kid who'd gotten a bike for Christmas.
"Where the hell'd this come from?" He asked.
"Dick," Michonne offered. "Richard. He went back to the place. Cleared out their guns, their ammo. Apparently booze and cigarettes too."
"Holy shit," Daryl said. "I half feel motivated to get up just to go outside and smoke me one. I been sittin' here thinking about getting my ass up, but I ain't made it yet."
Michonne chuckled. They all knew that feeling from time to time. She'd had more than one good occasion when she'd have rather wet herself like a child than moved to go to the bathroom. It was something you just came to understand these days.
"How about," she offered, "you hold off on that cigarette? And then I give you a real reason to want to go smoke?"
She walked over and straddled his lap before he could even manage to stutter out words around his surprise. She tipped her head and worked to find the best position she could to gently kiss him, sucking lightly on his lips before trailing her tongue over them, so that she didn't cause him the most excruciating pain possible with the broken nose he was wearing.
He chuckled at her when she pulled loose from the kiss.
"You got no damn idea how good that sounds to me," he said. "But, 'Chonne I gotta be a bitch date and turn you down. I can't hardly move. I'm so stoved up I can hardly move. I was serious about that."
Michonne hummed at him and furrowed her brow, now beginning to pick the bows out of his hair and drop them on the couch beside him with the cigarettes.
"Where are the kids?" She asked.
"Lisette," Daryl said. "She's teaching 'em something. Honestly? I don't know. She said she'd bring 'em back later. I don't reckon she kidnapped 'em."
Michonne chuckled, Daryl's words made even more humorous by the very evident fatigue in his voice. He was tired, exhausted even, and it showed clearly.
"I think they're probably safe," Michonne offered, tossing the last of the multi colored bows onto couch. "Ty? I haven't seen him since early this morning."
"Sent him to chop wood," Daryl offered.
Michonne kissed him gently again and nipped delicately at his lip, licking her own when she pulled away and shifting a little on his lap. He groaned at her and she could feel that he was probably at a difficult crossroads in life…he wanted it, but he wasn't sure if he was going to be able to do anything about it.
And it amused her more than it probably should have, but she wasn't a tease and she had full intention to take care of him when she was done with her fun.
"We don't need wood, Daryl," Michonne said. "The back side of the headquarters is stacked up waist high on me."
"We might not need wood, 'Chonne," Daryl responded, stopping to groan at her again for her teasing with the slight and intentional roll of her hips that she offered him. "But I needed Tyreese to go the fuck outside and hit something with an axe. Tree seemed like a good idea."
Michonne laughed at that.
"Well," she said, biting her lip to get control over the smile again, "we're alone then. We could….go upstairs and kill some time before dinner? Maybe we could take a nap?"
For good measure she shifted just enough in her position to increase his discomfort level a little. He smiled at her and craned his neck slightly to the side like he was popping it.
"I'm serious, 'Chonne," he said. "I ain't no good right now. You could put me up on blocks behind the barn for all I'm worth right now."
She smiled and shook her head.
"I don't think so," she said. "And I think if your decrepit old ass can make it up those stairs, I'll be doing all the work for the both of us. All you have to do is be there."
His lip curled and he narrowed his eyes. The devilish look came across his face that she'd come to love because it meant a different kind of time between them…it meant a fully playful time. And, although she loved when he was serious and when he was romantic and when he was head over heels and gushing with love for her…she loved when he was feeling playful too.
"You wanna use me, 'Chonne? Like some kinda toy?" He asked.
Michonne bit her lip again, hard this time, because if she hadn't she would have grinned at him and that wasn't what she wanted to do in the moment.
"I do," she said, nodding her head sincerely. "I want to use you, Daryl Dixon…just like a toy."
She tipped her head and nipped his lip again, harder to get a hold on because of his smile. Then she smiled softly at him.
"Would that be alright with you? If I used you like that?" Michonne said.
His smile broadened to the point that Michonne couldn't entirely keep hers under control in response to it.
"I think I'd like that a lot," he said. "I think it'd be just fine if you wanted to use me. Just so long as you don't throw me away when you're done."
Michonne shook her head.
"No, never," she commented. "I had a hard time getting rid of my toys when I was a kid. I had a tendency to hold onto them. Way too long."
"Even better, 'Chonne," he responded.
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Daryl expected Michonne to wake before him. He'd thought that the drained and dragging feeling of his body would keep him chained to sleep until he was literally forced to wake because something else in life had to happen. But that wasn't the case.
And when he moved around in the bed, his movements not even disturbing her, so that he could sit more comfortably with his back against the wall that served as their headboard, he realized that he could probably say why she was still sleeping.
This was the first time she'd rested in days.
She lie on the bed beside him, face down, almost entirely spread eagle like she was trying to take up the entirety of the bed with all her extremities. She was snoring softly, but he wouldn't have told her about it, and her mouth was open.
It was good sleep. It was the kind of sleep that he admired when he went in the middle of the night the check on the children and found them all passed out in their beds and completely lost to the world. It was the kind of sleep that you only achieved when you had nothing to worry about.
And relative to the worry that she'd carried around the day before, Michonne finally had nothing to worry about.
Daryl wished that he could make it so that she never had anything to worry about, but he couldn't. He wished that he could even go back and take away what she'd probably suffered the day before.
Because he knew that Michonne, whether or not she admitted it and whether or not anyone would guess it by seeing her when she was at her lightest, carried around a good deal of weight. She wanted to protect. She wanted to love and to be loved. She had come so far since he'd first known her, tossed like an angry, and slightly homicidal, sack of potatoes on the prison floor by Rick.
Now she wasn't angry, at least not at anyone who did nothing to stir up her wrath. Now she wasn't silent and brooding. Now she wasn't guarded and protective of herself.
But with letting that guard down, and with exposing the softer parts of herself that she'd protected for so long, came the worry of being hurt.
And yesterday had been a nightmare for all of them that had been taken, but it had been a nightmare for everyone left behind too.
Daryl moved over so that he was closer to Michonne. He traced the fingers of his outstretched hand lightly over the tight and well-defined muscles of her shoulders. He'd always thought her shoulders were beautiful. Her back was beautiful to him…but then again, everything about her was beautiful in his eyes.
Those shoulders, though, carried a good deal of weight and she held herself responsible for things that were never her responsibility.
But now, that's who she was. And he loved her for it, just as he loved her for everything else she was and everything else she did.
He hadn't meant to wake her. Honestly he'd wanted to let her keep sleeping with abandon for as long as she possibly could, but she stirred at his touch and stared straight ahead, across the mattress and at his legs most probably, with confusion on her face. She apparently had been closer to waking than he'd thought or the gentle glide of his fingertips on her skin wouldn't have woken her.
Michonne sat up just a little, mopped at her lips with her hand, and then looked at him as she started, like most people waking from a deep sleep, to realize where she was and what was happening around her.
She smiled at him.
"What?" She asked.
She broke into a light laugh.
"What, what?" Daryl asked.
"You're looking at me funny," Michonne responded. "Why are you looking at me like that?"
He smiled then. He hadn't realized that his face might be reflecting, in any way, what he was thinking.
"I was just thinkin' you a good person, 'Chonne," Daryl said. "You're prob'ly the best person I ever known in my life. Best person in the world, maybe."
Michonne stared at him, blinked and then shook her head.
"That's the oddest thanks for a blow job I've ever gotten in my life," Michonne responded.
Daryl chuckled.
"Fuck you," he said, breaking into laughter that made his cracked ribs ache much more than he found desirable at the moment. "Here I am trying to be serious, sitting up here thinking about what a good damn person you is for…for taking damn care of everyone around here…for giving a shit…and you go and turn it into that!"
Michonne sat up then, fully on her elbows, laughing. When she got control of herself, she rested her chin on her hand, her elbows keeping her upright, and stared at him. The smile was gone from her lips, but it lingered in her eyes.
He expected her to say something. She looked like she might say something really profound, something that might blow him away…some piece of wisdom before dinner that would carry him through at least a year or two.
And he was right.
"I love you," she offered.
He smiled at her and reached a hand out, rubbing a knuckle down her cheek.
"Love you too," he said.
