AN: Here we are, another chapter here.

And a check in with our other couple after a little time has passed.

I hope you enjoy! If you do, please do let me know!

111

"What's wrong?" Merle breathed into Andrea's ear. He held back, against his own desire, as best he could. "You don't want this or somethin'?"

It was a little too late, honestly, to say she didn't want this. Merle could stop. He could leave her body, if that's what she needed from him, but he couldn't undo what had already been done, and he was almost to his end.

The problem was that Merle knew what Andrea felt like, to him, when she was enjoying herself. He knew what she felt like when she was getting close to the kind of pleasure that made her shake. If she'd been looking for that at all, she surely hadn't found it yet, and Merle wasn't sure how much more he'd have to offer her before she'd have to name something else that she preferred in their bed.

"It don't hurt, Merle," Andrea said. There was a little complaint behind the words, and Merle felt amused.

Still, he didn't say anything. He didn't scold. He knew what she meant and, instead of wasting time that was valuable to the both of them, if they were to keep up the momentum they'd already built in this particular bedding, Merle pinched her nipple hard between his fingers and twisted enough to get her to cry out.

He winced at the sound and the initial feeling of her pulling away in response to the jolt of pain, but he appreciated that she settled into the discomfort and he felt her body reacting to it in other ways.

She didn't beat him to the end, but he pulled her along with him as he finished, rubbing the part of her that gave her the most pleasure while hurting her just enough to make her truly satisfied.

When Andrea collapsed, satisfied and trembling, onto the mattress, Merle found her mouth and kissed her. She bit his lip, and he bit hers back—a playful exchange, more than anything. Then, pulling away, he came back only to kiss her face. He held his lips against her skin a moment, savoring the softness of it. He stroked her hair. Then, he pulled away from her and sat on the side of the bed where he helped himself to a smoke that he'd already rolled and put in the small box he kept there.

"What's wrong, Merle?" Andrea asked.

"Hmm?" He hummed.

"Didn't I please you?" Andrea asked.

"You pleased me fine, Angel," Merle offered.

"But I'm starting not to please you, isn't that it?" Andrea asked. She moved, behind him, and he knew, instinctively, that he'd find her sitting there with her knees drawn up to her chest, if he were to look.

"You please me just fine," he said again.

"You got up fast, Merle," Andrea said. "Like you've got something heavy on your mind."

Merle thought about it for a moment. He did have something on his mind. He had a lot on his mind. He always did, really. His mind seemed to never really be still or quiet. He could keep it to himself, or he could share it with his young little wife. He hated the idea of weighing her down with his thoughts but, more than that, he hated the idea of her thinking that she somehow failed to please him.

Merle turned slightly and reached a hand back toward Andrea. He found her foot and he patted it. She understood the invitation without requiring anything else, and she crawled forward to sit beside him. She rested her head against him.

"I ain't disappointed in you, Angel," Merle said. "And you don't never fail to please me."

She pressed her lips to his shoulder.

"Then—what is it?"

"Hell—nothin'? Everything. I got a lot on my mind. Winter. Gonna be my first year winterin' with you."

"You don't want to winter with me, Merle?" Andrea asked.

Merle laughed to himself.

"Ain't a damn thing I want more," Merle said.

"Then—I don't think I understand."

"Damn near makes two of us," Merle admitted. "I ain't never really wintered with nobody but Daryl. Been a long time since it was just the two of us. I never had no woman to winter with."

"I'm your wife," Andrea said.

"And don't you know that I remember that shit every mornin' and every night. Seein' you there beside me. Rememberin'—I ain't leavin', and neither are you. Not until they throw me in some hole somewhere. Makes my heart beat hard. Fast."

"Good fast, Merle?"

Merle smiled at her. He moved enough to touch her face with his hand. She worked with Carol damn near every day outside. They milked cows, they gathered the last of the paltry things that grew in the garden. They helped feed livestock sometimes, taking turns keeping the little one from straying and getting trampled underfoot. They tended chickens, and once in a while Merle watched and laughed as Andrea would go streaking across the yard with that damned ornery cock after her as fast as his ass could run. She'd threaten him with the cook pot, but he was good for the laying hens, so she was doing little more than threatening, and Merle was pretty certain the cock knew it.

The sun and the wind was showing on her face. This life, into which Merle had brought her, was showing on her face.

"The best, Angel," Merle assured her.

She shifted a bit more, rooting in next to him. He'd left the bed before cuddling her and, arguably, he knew that she liked the holding, after, almost better than the bedding. It was during the holding time, maybe, that she trusted that he was happy with her.

Merle dropped his free arm around her and hugged her close to him, rubbing her arm with his hand.

"What's got you so heavy, then, Merle?"

"Nothin'," Merle said. "Just—wonderin' if I done right by you, Sugar. Wonderin' if I could ever do right by you."

"You're my husband," Andrea said. "You don't ever do wrong by me, Merle. You never left me at one of those houses in town."

Merle laughed to himself.

"You ever entertained the idea that there might be worse things than bein' a whore, Andrea?"

"Like what?" She asked, sincerely.

"Like bein' my wife," Merle said, equally as sincere.

Andrea stared at him, brow furrowed, before she smiled at him.

"Don't be silly, Merle," she said softly. "I love you—didn't you know that? Being your wife is…well…it's my favorite thing I do."

Merle laughed quietly.

"And I've ruined you, Angel. You just don't know it. I done got you in a life where—your pretty face is burnt by the sun and the wind. Your pretty little hands get torn up by the ground and the work you do. Work you gonna do your whole life."

"We all work, Merle," Andrea said. "That's how we keep our farm going. It's how we're gonna grow it so we don't ever have to worry about the winters or anything else."

"A woman like you oughta be a doll, Andrea," Merle said. "Put up somewhere to look at. Sit around on chairs covered with big ole pillows and drink with your finger up like this here." He demonstrated for her what he thought was becoming of a woman like her.

She shrugged her shoulder.

"I lived a lot like that, Merle, but they turned me out. It was you that took me in so I didn't starve to death or turn into one of them women fit only for the brothel."

"You runned away, Angel. They ain't turned you out. You was set to be one of them dolls, and you runned away from that life to be—what? The wife of some broken down ole cowpoke?"

"You're not broken down," Andrea said. "And I won't hear you say it anymore. I don't want another husband, Merle. And I wouldn't have one if he wanted me so badly that he couldn't live without me. I'd tell him—well, I'd tell him that he'd just have to die right where he stood."

Merle laughed.

"Even if he was one of them fancy dandies?" Merle asked.

Andrea made a face at him. The only light was the light from their lamp, but it shone in her green eyes. Her lip was split—evidence of her exposure to the elements or to the roughness of her husband, Merle couldn't be sure which, exactly. The thin little line of blood in the crack didn't seem to bother her any, but it flavored most of her kisses like metal. Still, not even that would keep Merle from tasting her lips every chance she gave him.

"Especially if it was one of them dandies," Andrea said. She smiled at Merle. "I'm not like I was, Merle, and they wouldn't want me."

"Because I ruined you," Merle said, laughing quietly. "We're right back where the hell we were, Angel. You see that?"

Andrea hooked an arm around his neck and playfully choked him a moment before simply hanging on him affectionately and nuzzling the side of his face.

"You think I'm ruined, Merle?" She asked.

Merle sighed.

"It ain't your fault. I broke you. Done it wrong."

"How'm I ruined?" Andrea asked.

"For one damn thing, you got bruises all over you."

Andrea backed off of him to examine herself in the lamplight. She did have bruises all over her. A couple were bruises from things like a tumble here or there in the yard. Once, she'd took a spill so hard that she'd had a fit and ripped half the skirt right off her dress in retaliation to the universe that would let her step on her skirts and hurt her knee like a child.

The other bruises, though, were Merle's handiwork.

He never hit her—nothing like that. Not the way some men hit their wives, at least—not with anger, and never with intention to truly hurt her. He wouldn't dare. He didn't believe in hitting women, except in the extreme circumstances where there was absolutely no other way to get control over them, and not getting control over them was set to get someone hurt worse than the hit required to stun them and safely restrain them. No. Andrea's bruises didn't come from Merle beating on her, but they came from him just the same.

He did pinch her, though. He did twist her skin. He did bite her. Sometimes he did hit her—just how she asked him to, though, so that it stung where their skin made contact.

He hurt her, at her request, because she said it didn't feel as good, when he loved her, if it didn't hurt at least a little.

"I don't please you because I've got bruises?" Andrea asked.

"You'd please me if you didn't have skin," Merle said. "Long as it suited you fine."

"Well, then, it suits me fine that I've got bruises," Andrea said with a satisfied sigh.

"You're supposed to like lovin' best when it's soft and gentle," Merle said. "You don't know that, but it's so, just the same. You're supposed to like when I'm ruttin' with you nice and easy like. That's supposed to be what makes you the happiest. That's supposed to be what the hell makes your legs shake like they do when the lovin' gets the best to you." Andrea hummed at him and he growled. "Don't'cha hum at me. That's what delicate women like you is supposed to like. I'm tellin' you the truth."

"Maybe I'm not a delicate woman," Andrea said. "I like when you're lovin' on me gentle, Merle, but you got up too fast."

"Not the after, Andrea, the during," Merle said, lighting another smoke for himself.

"That's silly," Andrea said. "It don't feel as good like that. Don't feel all the way done."

"That's because I hurt you when I was breakin' you and you don't know no better," Merle said. "And now I can't get you to like what you're supposed to like."

Andrea moved off from him and drew her legs up so that she could wrap her arms around them and rest her chin on her knees.

"You don't like what feels good to me?" She asked.

"I like makin' you feel good," Merle said. "But I don't like hurtin' you."

"It ain't bad hurt, Merle. It's good hurt."

"There ain't no such thing," Merle said.

"Except—when there is," Andrea said, matter-of-factly. Merle found he couldn't really argue with her. He wasn't sure how to. He sighed. He hummed.

"All the same," he said, but it didn't mean anything, and Andrea knew it. He sighed again. "It ain't right."

"Says who, Merle?" Andrea asked.

"Everybody," Merle said.

"Everybody that woulda left me to starve? Seen me in one of them brothels?" Andrea asked. "I don't give a damn for what they say no way. You're my husband. Our marriage paper says so."

"It do say that," Merle agreed.

"Then—then it ain't no nevermind to nobody else what we do when we're beddin' together," Andrea said. "It just ain't. Long as I'm pleasing my husband, I'm doing right. Especially since…since I won't never give him no babies like he oughta have."

"Don't start that again," Merle said, reaching a hand and patting her knee—the one that wasn't scraped from the day she'd had her fit in the yard and torn her skirt half off. She'd finally stopped fussing about the babies, mostly satisfied—at least as much as Merle assumed she'd ever be—to nuss the ones that Carol could have for the both of them. She didn't know that Merle kept planting just as many seeds in her belly as he could. He didn't tell her, on account of the fact that, this way, if they never took, he didn't have to see her mourning them each time she took to bleeding again.

"It don't matter if I'm ruined for them, Merle," Andrea said. "Because I don't want them no more than they want me. All that matters is—if you think I'm ruined. Am I ruined to you, Merle?"

Merle touched her face. He brushed his finger across her cheek.

"No," he said. "You ain't ruined to me. I'm sorry I said it. You're an angel to me, Andrea. I won't change my mind on that. OK?"

"I'm gonna love you forever, Merle," Andrea said softly. "You do understand that, don't you?"

"I'll be lucky if it's true," Merle said.

"It is," Andrea assured him. "Are you gonna do the same for me?"

"May lightnin' strike my sorry ass dead if I don't," Merle said with a laugh.

Andrea smiled. She raised her eyebrows at him.

"Then—you wanna come on back to bed and love me some more?" She asked. "I'll let you love me just gentle and soft-like, if you want. I won't ask you for more, if it's gonna make you sad."

Merle laughed to himself.

Maybe, just maybe, there was such a thing as fate, after all. And, maybe, fate really did see to it that things happened just like they were supposed to—like Merle somehow winning Andrea out of all the brides that might've been sent to him.

"The only damn thing that would make me sad, Angel, is if you weren't to ask me for what the hell you want."