Kiss Lick Bite

"Get outta the damn truck."

"No."

He was leaning against the open door with his left arm, drumming his fingers on the top edge of the window and scanning the empty intersection in front of us. Merle had parked the dusty blue pickup on the street in front of a card shop where you could buy those dated Christmas ornaments once upon a time, and there was a pharmacy on the corner opposite. There were signs a herd had moved through recently, trampled remnants of garbage and former lives, half torsos inching along on the pavement, a bloodied entryway where a pile of them fought over a cornered stray of some sort. The stench still lingered, but it was quiet. And all the roads were open. There was no way of being trapped, and I knew that's why he brought me here.

"Let's go, girl."

"No." I didn't move, my arms crossed over my chest, my fingers clenched around the seat belt strapped over my shoulder. I stared straight ahead out the windshield, but saw the way he was beginning to grind his teeth out of the corner of my eye, and I tightened my grip. I didn't think he would try to haul me out of the cab bodily, because he knew I was scared shitless, or he might for that very same reason. If he tried it, I wouldn't go down without a fight.

"You can't stay in that truck forever," Merle told me, his voice low and tight. He double checked the pistol holstered to the outside of his left leg, and that his sharpened knife blade was securely in place. He wouldn't look at me.

"Yes I can." I knew I sounded like a petulant child, and I hated it more than Merle did. But the way my heart hammered at my ribcage, continually knocking the breath out of me, kept me immobile, and that little voice in the back of my mind telling my legs to move because he was depending on me to help him was drowned out by the rushing noise in my ears.

Merle growled, and it wasn't the type of growl I liked hearing directed at me. He grabbed the empty backpack sitting on the bench seat between us, shut the driver's side door firmly and quietly, and strode around the front of the truck to my side.

I was shaking my head no before he had the door open, and I might have been chanting it under my breath, but that noise in my ears was deafening, so I wasn't sure. He unfurled my arms one at a time, his grip firm and unusually patient, and all my plans of fighting him evaporated as soon as he touched me because he was my comfort and security, and I always ran to him, not away from him. He laid my hands flat against his chest so I could feel his heartbeat and the way his muscles worked under his damp wife beater as he unclipped my seat belt, and pulled me out of the truck by my waist to stand facing him.

"Merle, please," I begged him, and I didn't recognize the smallness of my own voice. His chest hairs poking out of the collar of his shirt swam in front of my eyes, and he let my fingers ball in the material.

"You gotta, and I ain't gonna letcha do otherwise," he said, resting his knife hand on my hip, his other hand on my jaw, forcing me to look him in the eye. "I ain't gonna letcha stay afraid 'cause of one bad experience, sweetness. You know damn well there's gonna be more, but we still gotta fight. We ain't got no choice."

He let me search his eyes for his strength, let me touch his face, and he pulled me closer to him when he felt me take a deep, shaky breath.

"I don't want to be here."

"I know you don't," he whispered into the hair on my temple, and I heard the gruffness of his voice as his tenderness.

I did what he made me come out here to do, just the two of us, because he knew I was gonna have a hard time with it and he didn't want any other bodies around getting in the way of what he needed to do. I stopped thinking and let my muscle memory guide me. I covered him on entry, scavenged what I could until both our backpacks were heavy on our shoulders, and fortunately met with no resistance of the living or the undead kind. It was textbook easy looting, exactly like he had planned.

He waited for me to puke before I got back in the truck to leave with him, and had the water bottle opened and ready for me when I finally climbed in next to him.

"You did good, girl. You did real good," he said softly as he turned the key in the ignition.

I nodded and turned my face towards the open window, filling my nose with fresh, sweet air and my ears with a different kind of rushing sound.

I knew it wasn't in Merle's nature to stay quiet for too long, or to keep his hands off of me when we were alone together and I was close enough for him to touch me. But when we were out on runs, his knife blade stayed attached until we were back behind the relative safety of Woodbury walls. If it wasn't for that, he would've had his arm wrapped around my hips and me parked next to him already, the metal of his apparatus cool and unyielding and branding me through my clothes.

So I slid over next to him of my own accord, my jeans slipping easily across the vinyl seat, and lifted his arm to rest it between my thighs, the blade glinting between my knees.

I wanted to be close to him, too, all of him.

"That's my girl," he chuckled when I buried my face in his throat and rubbed the bridge of my nose along his jaw, his new stubble the texture of sandpaper. "Why don'tcha wander down a lil' further south for your ol' man," he smirked, taking turns eyeing the road and down the front of my own sleeveless shirt where it fell open between my breasts.

"Dirty ol' man," I picked on him, wrinkling my nose, then kissing his cheek affectionately.

"Mm hmm," he hummed, burying his forearm deeper in the apex of my thighs while leering at me and casually guiding the pick up around the same kinds of obstacles we'd been by a thousand times so we hardly noticed them anymore, abandoned vehicles and miscellaneous people parts. "I'm gonna getcha motor runnin' tonight so's I can give you the bonin' of your life tomorrow night after I win my fight," he grinned, waggling his eyebrows at me.

I stiffened. "I thought we talked about that?"

Merle glanced at my face, at the road in front of him, then back at my face. "Yeah."

"Well?"

"Well what?" He was squirming, torn between straightening his back or pushing the whole right side of his body harder against me.

"You said you were gonna think about pulling out of his next fight," I reminded him, trying to keep my voice neutral, my hands loosening from around his flexing bicep to rest on his forearm in my lap.

"I did think about it. It ain't the right time, darlin'. You gotta trust me on this one."

I gaped at him, and he frowned. "Then when is it gonna be the right time, Merle? When you're seriously hurt, when something stupid goes wrong 'cause we're all playin' with fire and it's only a matter of time before we all get burned? You already get the shit kicked outta ya in the name of entertainment for that twisted sonofa-"

"That's enough, goddammit," Merle warned. He braked to a jarring stop, bracing me back into the seat then letting me go to reach for the shifter on the dash before he caught himself and swore again. He kept his boot on the brake instead, letting his eyes wander over the landscape around us, securing the scene and reigning in his tongue. I knew he didn't like arguing with me, not like this, and he carried our words around for days after I had completely forgotten about them, but this was important.

"It ain't worth rockin' the boat just yet. We're safe there," he said. "You're safe there. I already promised you I'd see to that, and I meant it," he added, glaring at a lone raven circling on an invisible updraft, his raggedy wings tilting, not working against the air flow.

"I won't be there without you," I told him, staring hard out the passenger side window, away from him. "Nothing else matters, if you're not there."

"I don't wanna hear that crap. You just got scared the other day, and you're forgettin' to remember you're stronger than that," he said testily, rubbing his knife hand up and down his thigh, his thumb tapping again, this time on the steering wheel. "Now you can come watch me fight or not, I don't give a rat's ass no more."

I slipped back over to my side of the seat, and the click of my safety belt fastening was the last sound either of us made until we returned to Woodbury. Merle slammed out of the truck with his loaded backpack and headed to Milton's lab, and I slammed out with mine and headed to the infirmary, where I spent my time when I wasn't on wall duty, or with Merle out on runs or pretending to live a semi normal existence together as a couple in the apartment we shared.

I didn't turn to watch him walk away, and I knew he didn't turn to watch me walk away, and the knot in my throat grew larger and more painful as the evening progressed and Merle didn't come to bed with me that night. He slipped quietly in the door, rustled around in our tiny kitchen, then slipped back out again without coming to wake me with kisses and whispers in my ear to be ready and wet for him when he got back, like he always did. I pretended to be asleep, and when I knew he wasn't coming back, the knot in my throat exploded into hot tears, and I hid my face in the collar of his black t-shirt that I wore to bed if he wasn't there to wear.

I missed him when he wasn't next to me in bed, but I slept okay because I knew he was out there, keeping me safe, and I did the same for him on the nights I was on the wall, and he was home sleeping. But the best nights were the ones we spent together, either on guard duty or tangled together in bed since we both decided it was a waste of time not to be together, a few months after the Governor dragged Merle's nearly lifeless body into the infirmary the night I was covering for Doc Stevens.

Merle was one of those people who possessed an old soul, but other people didn't take the time or the interest to look into his eyes, and when he was recovered enough, I saw he didn't take the time or interest to let other people look into his eyes. But I had a lot of time and all the interest in the world while I took care of him, and when he let me in, it felt like we had known each other forever. He brought me out of my shell and brought me to places I never thought I'd see again, physically and emotionally, and out into the world beyond Woodbury's walls. Merle regained his strength and independence under my care and attention, and quickly earned his place in the Governor's upper ranks. He shared the perks of his position with me, and did what he had to do to keep us both secure and safe. It was an unspoken, understood agreement, and it worked, for awhile.

Lately, we both started noticing the little signs of things, of Philip himself, starting to unravel. I wasn't requested to participate in the reconnaissance mission with the National Guard troops, and I could see the worry lining Merle's face when he got back and picked me out of the crowd and kissed me, and hauled me by the hand back to our apartment instead of staying behind to listen to the Governor's big speech. He avoided talking about it until later that night, after the lights were out and after he spent his tension all over my breasts, and we were facing each other on the same pillow, his right arm cradled against me.

We talked about the other little things that might add up to big trouble down the road, in bed and late that night, but that's as far as it went. I wondered if it was time to leave the walls, before it was too late, and Merle wondered if his brother was still alive.

And then I saw that creeper wrapped around Merle's leg, jaws gaping and hands clawing, on that run that went bad so fast nobody had a chance to breathe until the gates of Woodbury opened up to let us back in, minus one man. I started having nightmares that one man was Merle. They were the first horrible, vivid nightmares I suffered in my life, true night terrors.

I decided I didn't want him to leave the walls, I didn't want to leave the walls, and I absolutely positively didn't want him risking his life in those stupid fights, even though I knew they were staged. Just the thought of him within touching distance of one of those creatures, close enough to wrap itself around his leg again, made me sick to my stomach.

Of course, Merle wasn't putting up with any of it.

When I had the nightmares, he was awake before I was. He talked to me and said my name, "C'mon now, wake up for me, it's just a bad dream." I'd launch myself in the direction of his voice, and he covered me with his body and made me tremble from a place that wasn't fear. He let me touch him, everywhere, and when he was sure I was ready for him, he showed me how alive he was.

He understood my fear. He understood nightmares. But he wasn't gonna let me live like that, because he understood that darkness could swallow me whole if I let it, and he wasn't gonna let me go there because he wasn't going back there.

He wanted me to keep fighting, so he fought with me, and now it was about the fights.

I didn't like fighting with him, either.

As soon as it was light enough to see, I dressed to go to him. I made two steaming mugs of coffee, weak and unsweetened, from the precious horde of instant granules we rationed to the grain.

He saw me coming, and reached for one of the coffees when I was far enough up the ladder, then set the coffee down and reached for me. Once I was standing on top of the wooden barricade next to him, he picked up his coffee.

"Mornin', sunshine."

"G'mornin', love."

"You're up early."

"I miss you."

"I know."

Merle squinted into the hazy street outside the wall, the cool morning fog leaking from the wooded yards to pool on the pavement, savoring his coffee. I grinned into my cup, watching him, enjoying the warmth in my hands.

"Almost done?"

"Mm hmm. Brownie better have his ass outta bed soon so's I can take you to mine."

"Maybe I had big plans today."

"Cancel 'em."

I snorted. "What, you think you come first or somethin'?"

"You know you always come first, girl," he answered, his gaze finally on me, serious and sexy, taking his time wandering up my body until he reached my face, my eyes.

I bridged the gap between the two of us, stood on my toes and spread my hand on the center of his chest, and kissed him. He met me there, tasting like coffee and smelling like the dew smells on an early fall morning. He pressed me against him with his right arm on the small of my back, minus the knife blade, and we both held our coffee cups up out of the way, careful not to spill.

"I left somethin' for you," he murmured against my lips.

"You did?"

"Mm hmm."

"Where, baby?"

"On the counter. But I hid it a little. Mostly 'cause it was dark and I couldn't see my hand in front of my face," he grinned down at me.

I giggled. "You must've hid it a lot, 'cause I didn't see anything. Guess I gotta go find my present now," I teased him, turning to walk away from him.

"Un un unh, you're stayin' right here with me til I say otherwise." He cinched his arm tighter around me and demanded another kiss, this one open mouthed and full of want.

"Fine," I sighed, rolling my eyes dramatically, "I guess I got nowhere else to be."

He chuckled at me and rubbed his spiky chin across my brow, and I relaxed into his sturdiness, finishing my coffee in the shelter of his embrace. He was unusually quiet this morning, content to hold me without any attempts at feeling me up or making crude remarks to make me fuss at him.

I kept the peace, and let him lead me home, his hand on the base of my neck and under my hair, once Martinez finally arrived to take over his shift keeping our community safe.

I spotted his tiny gift for me as soon as I walked in the door, tucked between an apple green ceramic bowl full of wild grapes and the toaster we never used. It was a ladybug, a stained glass sun sparkler strung with fishing line through the little loop in the top so it could hang in a window or off a car's rear view mirror. I held it up in a ray of sunlight beaming through my own kitchen window, turning it delicately to and fro in my fingers, smiling and holding back tears at the same time.

"You like it?" Merle asked hesitantly, confused by my reaction. Usually I had my arms thrown around his neck by now, squealing in happiness and kissing on his face, and that's why he brought me little miscellaneous trinkets, because they made me smile for him.

"I love it," I whispered, moving into his arms and laying my cheek over his heart, the ladybug clasped under my chin.

Merle rumbled, and I smiled.

I kissed the ladybug and kissed him, and put his gift carefully on the windowsill with the rest of my collection of his love.

"I got something for you, too, baby," I said, leaving him to rummage around in my backpack sitting on the loveseat in what we considered our living room, even though the apartment was basically one big room with a bathroom. I found what I was looking for and kept it hidden behind my back until I was standing in front of him.

"Whatcha got there, sweetness?" Merle asked, trying to sound disinterested, and peering around me curiously. He always tried to act all cool about it, but I knew he loved his presents from me.

"Me keeping you warm," I laughed, holding up a brown knit cap with a flourish. He nodded, his face splitting into a wide grin, and ducked down so I could put the hat on him. "Look how cute!" I giggled, adjusting the fold then framing his face in my hands as he growled at me, the good kind of growl, and backed me in the direction of our bed.

"You got plenty a ways to keep me warm, don'tcha?" he gruffed.

"Want me to show you?" I suggested playfully, holding him by his hips when the backs of my knees bumped the edge of the mattress.

"Mm hmm, maybe you should remind me. Winter's comin'," he said, slowly peeling the clothes from my body, his hand, warm and rough and soft, caressing me as I stripped him of everything but the cap I gave him. He watched me unbuckle his arm apparatus and set it on the nightstand, pulling me back to him to thread his fingers through my hair and trail kisses down my neck.

"This is how you remind me," I sang a random song snippet faintly into his ear and pushed him down on the bed, and he groaned and lifted his head to kiss me hungrily. He wiggled to the head of the bed, settled himself on our pillows, and settled me to straddle him. I stroked his arms, his shoulders, down the center of his chest, my fingertips fanning out to ghost over his hardened nipples. He lavished his attention on my breasts, the body that belonged to him, rubbing the smooth underside of his forearm over one of my nipples and playing with the other one until I arched into his touch and whimpered for more.

"C'mere, baby," Merle mumbled, and I lowered myself so he could suckle me, holding me in place by my bottom, brushing through my wetness for him with his hardness. He abruptly tugged me up by my hair, waiting for me to open my eyes to look at him.

"What do you need, love?" I asked him, gently tracing his eyebrow. He sighed and nipped at my finger.

"I need you to kiss me here," he replied, lifting his chin and using his stub to motion at his jaw.

"Oh yeah? Right here?" I smiled, feathering kisses across his five o'clock shadow to the velvety spot under his ear, stopping to mouth his earlobe.

He shivered, bucking me. "Oh yeah, right there."

I raised my face to kiss him until he moaned into me. I broke away from him and said breathlessly, "I think you need to lick me, right here."

Merle's eyes glittered as I tapped my collarbone. "I can do that," he grinned, then swiped the flat of his tongue over my skin, lingering in the hollow of my throat as I scratched lightly at the shorn hair on the nape of his neck, knocking his cap askew.

"My turn," he insisted, beginning to guide me down his body, pushing me with his hand and his forearm braced on my shoulders. I took my time, kissing his belly wetly, licking the length of the sex line creasing his hip, my tongue darting out to flick at the tip of his cock. "Fuck," he gasped.

"Should I stop here?" I questioned out loud, running my index finger along the length of him until he jumped against me.

He reached down and tilted my face up to look at him with a single finger under my chin. He studied me quietly, cupping my cheek tenderly. "Keep goin'."

I nodded silently, paused to place a kiss in the palm of his hand, and stretched myself over his legs, glancing up at him for an indication of when to stop. He nodded once, and I stilled, resting my chin on his knee, waiting expectantly.

"I want you to bite me. Right here," he told me, spreading his legs and patting the inside of his thigh.

My breath hitched, and I closed my eyes. "No."

"Yes."

I shook my head and laid my cheek over the spot he was pointing at, his leg hair downy, tickling my face. "Un unh."

"It's okay. G'on, darlin'. Ain't nothin' gonna happen, you'll see."

"Merle, please."

"Do it," he ordered, but his voice was hoarse with understanding, his hand pushing my hair away from my face so I couldn't hide from him.

I refused to look at him as I nuzzled his thigh, pressing my lips against him to stop their quivering, a single tear hovering on my eyelashes. I opened my mouth and barely scraped his skin with my teeth.

"Bite."

That single tear finally broke free to escape down my cheek as I obeyed my lover, my hero, the one I trusted above all else in a world gone wrong. The man I loved, and who loved me enough to not want me to be afraid anymore.

The man who would die for me, and I for him, because that's what love was these days.

I bit him, and he rolled me under him and made love to me through my tears, and for the first time since we'd been together, he didn't pull out. He left his seed deep inside of me, breathing my name into my throat, because he wanted to share his love, his hope, with me.

He wore my cap for the rest of that day.

I was there to watch him fight the next day.

Merle banished the nightmares in my sleep, but the waking ones persisted.

"We fuck for life, girl, you an' me. I ain't gonna let this ol' world tell us otherwise. There's gonna be somethin' left long after we're gone, and that's somethin' worth fighting for."

Maybe someday there would be nothing left to fight but the inevitable march of time.