AN: Here we are, another chapter here.
I hope you enjoy! Let me know what you think!
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Ed had taught Carol that sulking was a bad thing. It was a terrible thing.
Sulking, when Ed was the one who had something to sulk about, meant that it was only a matter of time before he tried to make himself feel better by making Carol feel as badly as he possibly could.
Daryl had taught Carol—in so many ways—not to take Ed as any sort of authority on the ways of men.
Although she hated to see him suffer in any capacity, the minor suffering that usually brought on a little sulking wasn't anything terrible because, for Daryl, sulking usually led to good things. Whereas Ed's sulking made him feel vulnerable—and his vulnerability made him want to attack Carol—Daryl's sulking brought on a vulnerability that made him seek comfort in Carol's arms.
And Carol was always more than happy to help love away any discomfort that Daryl might feel as long as such an action was within the realm of her ability—and Daryl had shown her that, usually, it was.
Carol was kissing his shoulders, wrapped around him from behind, when Daryl pulled away from her and got to his feet to take the roughly two steps that it took him to cross their cell. Carol sat back on her heels and watched him.
Even if nobody else in the world ever saw what she saw, she thought he was glorious. He was perfect in every way. She liked admiring him as much as she liked making love to him, but he hadn't always liked to let her see him as openly as he did no, moving around their cell.
"Where are you going?" Carol asked. "Are you done?"
"Water," Daryl said. He poured himself a glass of water from the pitcher of clean water that Carol had brought in that evening. He drank down half the glass before he refilled it. "Fuckin' dehydrated."
Carol laughed to herself. She thanked him when Daryl walked back to the bed and offered her the glass to drink her fill of the water.
"Are you done?" Carol asked, handing him back the glass.
"Hell no I'm not done," Daryl said, some growl coming out with the words. "But you know what really pisses me off?"
"Hmmm?" Carol hummed, relieved that she could talk to Daryl about things that pissed him off—even if it was her that pissed him off—without concern.
"You said that shit would stop," Daryl said.
"I said it was normal," Carol said.
Daryl put the glass down again and returned to the bed. This time he crawled onto the bed and Carol backed up to give him enough room before he caught her in his arms and kissed her. As soon as he broke the kiss, he clearly thought better of it, so he pulled away from her only to come back for more.
Carol laughed to herself when he separated from her the second time.
"You said it would stop," Daryl said. "You said it was one of them things that I oughta expect because—'cause it was new. And I was...ya know."
"Excited," Carol offered.
"But you lied," Daryl said. "'Cause it ain't fuckin' stopped."
"OK—but you act like it's a bad thing," Carol said. She reached forward and caught his face in her hands. She held it so that he would look at her. She kissed his lips again, this time more tenderly than he'd kissed her before.
"It's embarrassing," Daryl said.
"Why?" Carol asked. "Nobody knows but us. I would never tell someone something that embarrassed you."
"It's embarrassing that I'm a full-grown man and I damn near can't get through foreplay 'fore I fuckin' blow my load," Daryl said. "There ain't no damn way you can paint that so it ain't somethin' to be ashamed of."
Daryl frowned at her and she kissed him again to wipe away the frown. She smiled at him and raised her eyebrows at him.
"I can think of about a dozen ways to present it so that it's nothing to be embarrassed about," Carol said. "First of all, Daryl, most men don't like foreplay the way that you do."
"Shut up," Daryl offered. It was his way of saying he didn't believe her. In the dim light of the lamp, she could see his cheeks were pink. This was something that had bothered him before, but it suddenly bothered him a great deal more now. That much was evident. Carol wasn't sure why, either, that he would suddenly be so bothered by something that she'd promised to keep between them—always—except for the fact that someone had arrived at the prison which Daryl might fear would give him a hard time for this.
"Daryl, you treat foreplay like it's the main event," Carol said. "You enjoy it. You take your time with it. You savor every bit of it. Most men don't do that. Now, from a woman's perspective? It's an absolutely amazing thing that you enjoy it the way you do. It means that I get to come—sometimes four or five times before you even think that it's time to get started. If every man waited that long, they probably wouldn't make it either. That's why what you consider to be a quickie is what most people consider to be just—well, just normal."
"So I been doin' it wrong all this time and you just didn't bother to tell me?" Daryl asked.
Carol laughed to herself.
"I think you're doing it very right," Carol said. "Didn't you think we were doing it right?" Daryl shrugged his shoulders. The clear look of pouting came back across his features. Carol caught his hand in hers, kissed his fingers, and then she moved his had to press it to her belly—a belly which he admired a great deal even though she felt like she looked like she had simply enjoyed a few too many large meals in the past few days. "We have to be doing it right. Otherwise, I don't think this would have happened."
At the mere suggestion of it, Daryl leaned forward and pressed his lips to Carol's. She kept the kiss going. It wouldn't be long before his sulking was done simply because his body would have found the energy and reserves to renew his ability to follow through with his interest in love-making.
She slipped her hand around to the back of his neck and tickled the skin there. She felt him shiver. Her other hand, wrapped around the upper part of his arm, felt his skin prickle with goosebumps. She smiled against his lips before she kissed him again and then pulled away to smile at his heavy-lidded eyes. His interest was returning with a vengeance.
"Besides—I would never consider it a bad thing that my..." Carol hesitated. She hadn't tasted the word before in a situation like this, but she decided to try it. "That my husband would find me so—desirable—that he would lose control of himself. And that his desire wouldn't die. He wouldn't simply begin to find me boring. He would keep finding me just as irresistible as he did the first night in a tent on a little farm."
"I ain't," Daryl breathed out. He bit Carol's lip hard when he came in for the kiss, but she forgave him. She knew that he didn't mean to hurt her. He was simply hungry, and she appreciated that he had a certain hunger for her that never quite seemed to be satiated.
He didn't understand, but it made her feel like the most desirable woman left in the world, and that was something she never would have believed herself capable of feeling. Before Daryl, she would have known that feeling anywhere near that confident would have gotten her a lecture, at the very least, and something far worse most of the time.
"You aren't what?" Carol asked.
"Your husband," Daryl said. "Or you forgot we ain't married? Gotta wait for Glenn and Maggie. I told him, though, today, that he's gotta get her goin' or we goin' first 'cause we don't wanna wait forever."
Carol laughed to herself.
"Vows or no vows," Carol said, "you're as much my husband right now—just like this—as you'll ever be. I promise you that the vows don't make that much of a difference. If you want to be my husband now, even while we wait, then that's what you are."
"I want everybody else to know it, too," Daryl said.
"I've got a pretty good idea that they already do," Carol said. "They know how happy we are. How happy you make me. They know—Sophia has a Mommy and a Daddy. They know we have a little one on the way that makes us both pretty happy. I think they can figure out that we're just about as married as we can be."
"Still, I want 'em to see it," Daryl said.
"They will," Carol said. "Just as soon as Glenn and Maggie get married. And with this Governor situation out of the way, that could be any day."
"Over breakfast this mornin'," Daryl said, "Merle—he ain't said it right out, but I got the feelin' that he thought you might not really wanna marry me. Like—you might not—really wanna do it."
Carol laughed to herself.
"And I talked to him around lunchtime," Carol said. "I think he and I reached an understanding."
"An understandin'?" Daryl asked. Carol nodded. "He ain't done nothin' to hurt you, did he? Like he didn't say no asshole shit?"
Carol smiled.
"Just you saying that makes me wonder why it is that you'll let him say some—some asshole shit to you, Daryl, as you say. Something like—I might not really want to marry you. Something to upset you. And you'll let him say it, but as soon as you think he's said something to me, you look like you want to put your pants on and go demand an explanation."
"I don't want him bein' an asshole to you," Daryl said.
"And I don't want him being an asshole to you," Carol offered. "But he didn't hurt me. Not in any way—I'm just mad that he hurt you."
"He ain't hurt me," Daryl said.
Carol rubbed his face, stroking his cheek affectionately with her knuckles. He closed his eyes a second. His features softened a little and he clearly relaxed just a bit.
"Were you honestly worried that I didn't want to marry you?" Carol asked. "Because—that's new." Daryl hummed at her. It was noncommittal. "He asked me if this was your baby. Of course it is," she added quickly. "But I wanted to make sure he didn't plant some kind of idea in your head."
"Wanted to say Soph weren't mine," Daryl said. "Told him she was. But—he weren't wrong, Carol."
"He was wrong," Carol assured him. "Biologically, Sophia's father is Ed. But that doesn't matter. It was—a different life for me. And he was her father, but he was never anything more. He never wanted to be anything more. But you're her Daddy, Daryl, and nothing will ever change that. She will never, ever think any less of you than to think that you're her Daddy. The man who..." She broke off and laughed to herself. She ran her fingers through his hair and he closed his eyes to the affection again. "The man who chases away the bad dreams and lets her play with the rabbits and gives her a bath so she can splash in the water longer than I could let her when I've got work to do...and the man who would have fought Rick Grimes if he'd tried to take any of her special stuffed animals off a truck."
Daryl laughed to himself.
"They was a half dozen more left," Daryl said. "It ain't like I was deprivin' his kid of no stuffed animals."
"My point is that you're Sophia's Daddy. If you don't believe me, then you just ask her who her Daddy is and she'll tell you," Carol said. "But she'll probably laugh at you, too, and call you silly for even asking such a ridiculous question. Something that's so ridiculous that—that a three year old knows it's ridiculous."
"I know," Daryl admitted.
"Is he the one who has you upset about—tonight?" Carol asked. "Because it's never been a problem for either one of us to know that round one is almost always followed by round two."
"He'd gimme hell if he knew about it," Daryl said.
"Then we won't tell him," Carol said.
"He'd give me hell if he knew that you were...that I didn't have a lot of experience."
Carol swallowed down her smile. She didn't think it was funny that she was Daryl's first experience with sex. Rather she thought it was nice that he'd come to her without knowing anything, and he'd admitted to her that he'd always been scared of having sex. It wasn't that he thought he wouldn't be good at it, or that he thought he wouldn't like it, but he worried that he would like it. And he worried that if he did like it, and if he did it with someone he liked, they might simply leave him. And, somehow, the sex would make the loss hurt more.
He worried that he would like it—that he would like that person—but they would just be gone.
Daryl feared losing that which he cared about more than he feared just about anything in the world. It had led him to believe it was better to do without than it was to risk losing.
Carol had assured him that loss, though a painful part of life, at least wouldn't be voluntary with her. She wouldn't leave him on purpose.
Carol had told him, with no lack of insecurity on her part, that Ed had assured her that she wasn't very good at sex. She was barely good enough to get by. She still remembered how sincerely Daryl had laughed at that when he'd promised her that it wouldn't matter to him. She'd be the best he'd ever had.
Carol could sincerely promise Daryl that he was the best she'd ever had. He was an attentive lover. He loved exploring with her. He took his time and he enjoyed every part of their lovemaking experiences together. Maybe he wasn't as experienced as some men may be, but Carol wouldn't trade his enthusiasm for being with her for their experience for anything in the world.
"You've got tons of experience," Carol said. "And you get more every day. Merle doesn't have to know that you've got all the experience you've gotten with me. Not if you don't want him to know. But, no matter what he says, I can promise you that he's not any more talented than you are, Daryl. He doesn't know anything more about sex than you do. Because—I'm more than satisfied. And we've got a baby on the way to prove that we must be doing something right."
Daryl smiled at her and she kissed him. She nipped his bottom lip and he playfully responded in kind.
Carol shook her head at Daryl when they broke apart. "Merle's your brother, and I know you love him, but know that I love you. I don't know what Merle's seen in life that's made him the way he is but...I'm not going to appreciate him coming in here and hurting you any more than you would appreciate him coming in here and hurting me. I'm sorry I didn't get to him before he said anything—anything at all to you—but I told him as much at lunchtime. I'm not going to tolerate it."
Daryl cocked an eyebrow at her and smirked.
"You sound kinda—protective," Daryl said.
"I am," Carol assured him. "Is that—bad?"
"Kinda hot," Daryl said with a laugh.
Carol slipped her hand down and wrapped her fingers around him. He was starting to wake up. His interest was piqued. Carol stroked him to draw his attention a bit more.
"Hot enough for round two?" She asked.
"Why we gotta stop there?" Daryl asked with a smirk.
"Because one of our children will have you up before dawn," Carol offered. "And the other will have me up before dawn."
Daryl laughed and kissed her. He moaned at her when she stroked him again and she let go of him as he changed his position to rest his back against the wall in their cell. He tugged at her hand to invite her to come over to him and take her position above him.
"In that case," he said, "come here, woman. We better get goin'."