When Henry takes Hershey on a walk to the hen house to gather all their rations of eggs for the week for the big Christmas breakfast, Carol and Daryl retreat to their bedroom. They don't bother to light the fireplace that has dwindled to ash, but they do bury themselves beneath two quilts.
Daryl kisses her, and Carol wraps her arms around his neck to kiss back passionately. When she draws away, he asks, "This means we're gonna fuck, yeah?"
"I thought a man's libido was supposed to decline when he was over fifity."
"Well, I got me a hot wife. 'Sides, been tryin' to make up for lost time. Didn't get laid much in my thirties. Or m' early forties," he admits. "Or twenties. Or m'teens."
"No? How often did you get laid before you met me?"
His eyes go up, like they do sometimes when he's trying to recall information. "Three, four times a year maybe."
Her eyes twinkle teasingly. "And you expect me to bring your lifetime average up to…what, exactly?"
"Three hundred times a year."
She laughs. "Well, I'm not a mathematician, but I think we'd have to do it over seven hundred times a year to get your lifetime average up that high."
"A'ight. Guess we best get started then." He slides a cool hand under her shirt and cups a breast playfully.
She draws his hand down to her stomach. "I don't want to fuck."
His face falls. "'S Christmas," he says so plaintively and boyishly it makes her smile.
"I don't want to fuck," she repeats. "I want to make love to my husband, who gave me a beautiful wedding ring today."
Daryl's eyes brighten and that tiny smile – the one she's not sure anyone but her can see – ever so slightly bends the left side of his lips. "Christmas sex?" he asks. "Slow 'n gentle?"
She nods. "And lots and lots of kissing. Quiet kissing. The boys will be back eventually."
"Mhmhmm…." He kisses her chin, and then her lips, softly, before gently pushing his tounge inside. When he finally draws away, her nipples are hard, despite not being touched, and she's breathing heavily. "'N naked cuddlin'?" he asks. "All pressed up?"
Carol nods and begins to squirm out of her clothes. Daryl, grinning broadly now, yanks his shirt over his head, and soon their bare flesh is hot and flush together, and Daryl's hands are slowly roaming everywhere, with his lips and tongue following. As he moves with licks and nips from her collarbone down to her breasts, Carol balls the sheets into fists and holds on.
[*]
Bellies still full from a hearty brunch of scrambled eggs and leftover wild boar from Christmas Eve dinner, the family lounges in the living room before the fireplace playing Clue.
"I'm ready to make my guess!" Hershey announces.
"Everyone ain't had but one turn," Daryl says.
"But I'm ready!"
"Are you sure?" Carol asks.
"Yep! It was Colonel Mustard in the library with the candlestick." Hershey grabs the Confidential envelope, slides out the cards, and checks his guess. "I was right!"
"You can't be right, Herhsey," Henry tells him with a hint of irritation. "I have Colonel Mustard."
"Hershey, sweetie," Carol warns him, "remember we talked about cheating?" Hershey was doing a lot of intentional miscounting when he was moving his silver shoe in Monopoly earlier. "Remember how we said if you lie to people, they can't trust you when you're telling the truth?"
"But I am telling the truth!"
"Herhsey," Daryl scolds sharply. "I got the damn candlestick. We know yer lyin' out yer ass."
"Maybe we don't need to use that particular expression, though," Carol tells him with a raised eyebrow.
"But I am telling the truth!" Hershey insists, and he shows them the cards. Sure enough, there's Colone Mustard and the candlestick.
"The hell?" Daryl looks at the candlestick in his hand.
"Where'd you get this game?" Henry asks.
"That house where we found the vodka."
"They must have cobbled together cards from two games," Carol speculates. After she goes through the cards, they find three duplicates and three missing one. She gets masking tape and a pencil and re-labels the cards, and off they go for a second round of Clue.
[*]
The music winds to a gradual stop on the hand-cranked phonograph that Daryl brought Carol for Christmas four years ago after raiding the six-room history museum of a small Virginia town. She switches records, cranks it up again, and resumes her spot curled on the couch beneath the afghan, where she's been half reading and half watching Daryl and Hershey lying stomach down on the bear skin rug slamming the plastic levers of their two hungry hippos.
Henry has gone back to his dorm, because the twenty-somethings (including, no doubt, Cyndie) are having their own little Christmas celebration, but he's promised to return later tonight for Carol's walnut pie. It's a strange pie, cobbled together through experimentation with limited ingredients, but the entire household agrees it's a good pie. And tonight, it will be dinner. In the meantime, they'll snack on deer jerky and freeze-dried apples to tide them over.
The puppies are huddled nervously against their mother in response to the clack, clack, clack of the plastic hippos, and Merle is intermittently barking at the violent display of pounding and rolling white balls. A marble pops off the surface of the game.
"Don't let the dogs swallow that!" Carol warns, and Daryl reaches out, slams it beneath his hand, and puts it back in the center before resuming his clacking.
Slam slam slam slam slam slam slam go the hungery hippo's mouths in vain pursuit of the very last marble, which rolls its way languidly in the center. Hershey puts his hands on either side of the board and tilts it slightly, sets it down, and then pounds his lever to snatch up the last marble.
"'S cheatin'!" Darly mutters.
"Only because you didn't think of it," Hershey says. He counts his marbles and slides them back in the center. "Are you going to play this time, auntie?" he asks.
"Maybe next time," Carol says.
"If I gotta be down here," Daryl tells her, "get yer ass down here, too."
Carol closes the book she just opened. "I'll get my ass down there and kick your ass, mister."
"Like to see ya try, sweetheart."
[*]
Henry returns with mail from the pony express. "On Christmas?" Carol asks.
"The pony express guy came to spend Christmas with his girlfriend," Henry explains. "She's an Oceanside chick."
"Don't say chick," Carol tells him as she opens the letter from Michonne.
"Why not? Daryl does."
"Nah." Daryl smirks. "I say broad."
Carol chuckles. "Not around me you don't."
Henry flops into Daryl's armchair – because Daryl is on the floor playing Monopoly with Hershey, and opens a letter Carol can tell from the girlish handwriting is probably from Jessica.
She reads through Michonne's Christmas greetings, her update on the kids, and a P.S.:
Don't know what you were talking about. Ezekiel's good between the sheets. I'm starting with a rating of 7 on a scale of 10, but I think he's trainable.
"So funny?" Daryl asks.
"Just something Michonne said." She folds the letter, tucks it back in its envelope, and it's then she notices the pallor on Henry's face. "Something wrong?"
Henry swallows, folds his letter up, and shoves it deep into his pants pocket. "Everything's fine."
"Some bad news from Jessica?"
"No. Everything's fine," he insists, but he doesn't look fine, and when she serves the Christmas walnut pie, he doesn't hum as he eats it like he does most years. He seems off somewhere in his mind, though Hershey calls him back by asking him to play a two-person game of Stratego.
"Good time for a smoke," Daryl says, and he clears his plate to the plastic tub before putting on his boots and heading to the back porch.
Carol, still in her warm flannel PJS, steps in her boots by the back door, pulls on a coat, and follows.
"Want one?" Daryl asks with a look of surprise, extending her the cigarette he's just lit.
She shakes her head.
He takes a drag, and the smoke makes grasping gray tentacles in the cold December air. "Gonna work on one of my bows for a bit when I go back in. Can't play no more damn games."
"Hershey really loves that you do that with him."
"Mhm. Well, ain't no one would do it with me when I's a boy. Used to play both sides of the board."
The rays of the sun, which is beginning to set, paints a webslike pattern on the porch railing. "Did you see Henry's face when he read that letter?" Carol asks.
"Mhmhm."
"He looked upset," Carol continues. "I think he got some bad news from Jessica. Maybe she broke up with him?"
"Dunno."
"I wonder what that letter said."
"Well, Sherlock, ya ain't gonna crack the case out here. Go inside 'n stay warm."
"Would you talk to him?" she asks.
"He clearly don't want to talk 'bout it."
"But I'm worried about it. Please?"
"He ain't gonna talk to me."
"Now that he's older, sometimes you get more out of him than I do. He wants to be one of the guys. So maybe he'd talk to you about whatever it is. Please? Try?"
Daryl sighs. "Yeah, a'ight."
"Thank you." She kisses his cheek. "I'll send him out when he's done playing that game with Hershey."