AN: Here we are, another chapter here.
I hope you enjoy! Please don't forget to let me know what you think!
111
Daryl lost track of time in the best way.
He was exhausted. His muscles were sore. His joints ached. Every day there was a new cut to wash and wrap with clean cloth, there were new splinters to free from his skin, and new blisters to be ignored as well as possible.
Every day there was advancement, accomplishment—a clear view of a piece of their future sliding into place. Every day there were things scratched off of lists, and new things added, and steps taken toward a vision that all of them, somehow, could see.
There were tears, and sweat, and laughter—all shared among their entire group.
And when night fell, Daryl shared some things alone with his wife, the two of them choosing to sacrifice some of their precious time to sleep and rest so that they could drink in the pleasure of the other's company in the quiet hours.
In the evening, by lamplight, they often spent time with Lydia. She liked games and family reading time—where someone, who was usually Carol, but sometimes Daryl, read aloud from a book that she'd chosen. Sometimes, Daryl thought the books were better suited to private reading than, perhaps, family reading, but he reminded himself that they were all adults and, really, their job here was to help Lydia with the transformation from the child she'd never been allowed to be to an adult.
Their purpose wasn't to restrict her, really, but rather to help her grow—whatever that might look like in practice.
Their group made it a rule that every few days, they rested. Muscles didn't heal without adequate food and rest. Brains didn't heal without the same. It would do none of them any good to drive ahead with too much purpose and determination, only to end up sick, broken down, or so exhausted that they couldn't respond quickly enough when such a response was necessary to save their own life or the life of someone they had come to depend on to build all of this.
The days of hard work were rewarding because, with every nail driven, every log hauled, every semi-wild animal worked with toward taming, and every animal skinned for the table or the smokehouse, Daryl could see their dream coming together. He could see their vision taking shape. He could see the promise he'd made that this would work, and there would be a life here, becoming a reality.
The days of rest were rewarding because Daryl was able to enjoy the fruits of their labor. He was able to spend time with the love of his life—because with the passing of each day, he knew more and more surely that Carol was the only woman that he was ever meant to truly love—and he was able to spend time with the people that he was beginning to see as his family.
They were a family, too, where everything seemed to be built on the idea of equity, and not necessarily on the concept of absolute equality.
It wasn't fair to ask Muh to take the same kinds of jobs as everyone else—as equality might dictate—or to put in quite so many hours of backbreaking labor. However, she took every job she was capable of taking, and a few that surprised them, even, to give a hundred percent of herself toward contributing to their future—a future that, realistically, she may not see for nearly as long as the rest of them. She tended animals and, surprisingly, was better with many of them than anyone else. She had a gentle hand about tending the creatures that many of them seemed to appreciate after Beau's more heavy-handed attempts to force them into being more tamed and subdued.
Muh was also oddly good at sniffing out the living animals in the area, and it was nothing out of the ordinary to see her disappear and come back, some time later, with brambles in her hair and a chicken tucked up under arm—smiling a broad, toothless smile over her victory.
They knew that Sadie wasn't their best look-out and, as a result, she was never put on guard duty for anything. While they worked unprotected by fences or walls, they let Sadie work and others kept watch for Walkers—which they hardly ever seemed to see—or anything else that might be problematic. Nobody drew attention to this; it was simply the way that things were. Being short one of her senses, it simply made sense not to put her in a position where she was responsible for the safety of everyone else based mostly on her observational abilities.
They didn't want to set each other up for failure or heartbreak.
The same kind of courtesy, perhaps, was extend to Alice. Though the woman was absolutely meticulous with things, she was clumsy. If they needed careful and steady work done by hand, she was perfect for that, but she would trip over her own feet—or anything left lying around—on a regular basis. Daryl had seen her trip several times after being explicitly warned that she was about to trip over something. As a result, it was simply a group agreement that anything that absolutely could not be dropped would not be passed to Alice. She was left to carry things that, should they be dropped, would not be damaged.
And the list went on.
They all brought strengths and weaknesses to the small family unit. That was nothing unusual, of course. As long as there had been people, there had been strengths and weaknesses. Since the quarry, and since the moment that he'd truly accepted that he would be part of some kind of "unit" at the end of the world, Daryl had realized that it would be working together to make people's strengths and weaknesses blend for the good of the group that would save them all. The biggest difference was that, for the first time, Daryl was seeing everyone simply feeling comfortable with that.
He had seen, in the past, competition. There had been a need to find superiority—here, there really was none. He had seen people who felt insecure and, as a result, had to hide behind bravado and over-action. Here, nobody seemed to care that they were seen as imperfect. Daryl had seen some who had demanded special treatment. Here, everyone was, in their own way and in their own time, special. There was no need to beg for more. The demands being made of everyone were just that—demands being made of everyone. Every person must do their part to bring about what they all wanted to have—a safe place to spend what was left of their days.
It was, Daryl thought, the small size of the group that probably helped things to work in harmony. There weren't too many people with which to find clashing personalities and ideas. There were so few people that everyone was important. Everyone was integral. Everyone was appreciated and valued—and those things went a long way toward creating peace.
They ate most of their meals together, moving from house to house, sometimes, to sit at each other's tables. The coming together in celebration and fellowship, Daryl thought, also helped the small unit to come together as a family.
They laughed together, complained together, worried together, and reassured each other together. At the end of the day, it would have been impossible not to become a family and, in becoming family, it became impossible not to truly care for one another.
Time passed, work was done, family was built, and home was celebrated—and Daryl lost time in the best way possible.
111
"Stay—five minutes," Daryl said. He reached his arm across the bed and caught Carol's wrist. She'd just stirred and started to sit up immediately. They may have overslept, but nobody had come knocking, so it was possible that everyone else had overslept as well. Sometimes, the body demanded rest, and it took it whether you wanted to give it or not.
The early morning sunlight streamed through the thin cotton curtains that hung over the clean windows of their bedroom. When they had a day off of from work, Carol spent at least half of her day washing their house—room by room and quite systematically—from floor to ceiling. She loved making the farmhouse a home. Daryl could see it, when she cleaned. She hummed to herself, smiled to herself while she worked, and took obvious pride in seeing the cleanliness she left behind.
Their home felt very much like what it was—a home. And Daryl loved it. He loved everything about it.
He loved the clean smell of the recently washed cotton sheets that had dried on a line outside the house. He loved the way the sunlight came in—finding its way around the soft, white cotton curtains that hung over clean windows. He loved the way that Carol looked in the morning with her hair in every different direction and sleep still making her eyes puffy.
He eased his hand down from where he'd caught her wrist and found her hand. He squeezed it, and she smiled at him through sleepy eyes.
"My laying ladies are not going to appreciate my being late with their breakfast," Carol said. She pursed her lips at Daryl, doing her best to swallow back a smile either at his request or how he looked. He smiled at her, not attempting to hold it back at all. She reached and ran her fingers through his hair, smoothing it down. She'd nearly scalped him, not long ago, with a pair of scissors, and now that his hair was growing out a bit, it was given to going in wild directions like her own. "And those milk cows are ruthless if we're late."
Daryl laughed quietly.
"Let somebody else handle it," Daryl said.
Carol hummed. She leaned over and kissed him. He could taste her humoring him with the kiss. She was smiling when she pulled away.
"I'm really in the mood for some of the fresh milk, Pookie," she said. "Warm—straight from the source."
Daryl laughed and sat up, running his hands through his hair to smooth it down a bit.
"Stay here," he said. "I'll give you somethin' else. Warm. Straight from the source."
Carol grimaced at him. He didn't take it personally. Instead, he laughed in response.
"You're a hopeless romantic," Carol said, the expression not entirely gone from her face. "Don't you ever let anybody tell you different."
"You might be surprised to know this," Daryl said, "but there really ain't all that many people that take too much interest in whether or not I'm romantic—being that I'm a married man that's hopelessly devoted to my beautiful-ass wife."
Carol smiled.
"Much better," she said. "But—I'm still going. The sooner we get the morning chores done, the sooner we get breakfast."
Her lingering sleepiness was gone, and she practically hopped out of bed. Daryl took a cigarette from the bedside table and lit it. He watched her as she stripped off her pajamas—a soft cotton nightgown this morning—and quickly worked her way into the clothes she would wear today.
"You're tellin' me you'd rather have breakfast than what I got to offer you over here?" Daryl teased. "You'd trade all this—this fuckin' sausage—for some eggs?" He felt his own face grow warm, but it was worth it for her amusement.
Carol glanced back over her shoulder at him and smiled. He was teasing her, mostly, and had no expectation that she would do anything with the erection that plagued him most mornings—one that was almost gone, now. However, he had to admit that she looked so beautiful right now that it would have taken little more than a half-hearted indication that she was interested for him to be up and ready to do whatever she wanted.
She turned around and sighed, hands on her hips. She was barely able to hold back her laughter, and it was clear on her face.
"I really am starving," she said. "But—if you can be quick…"
"Are you offering me a quickie?" Daryl asked with a laugh.
Carol raised her eyebrows.
"Are you turning it down?" She asked.
"How quick we talkin'?" Daryl asked.
As a response, Carol shuffled her way quickly out of the pants she had just put on—not even being coy about leaving panties on—and dropped a hand to rub herself even as she walked around to Daryl's side of the bed. She stood there, rubbing herself just the way that Daryl knew she liked—just the way that she could do it to just about get herself from zero to done in less than a minute—and she bit her lip at her own efforts before she spoke.
"No foreplay necessary," she said. She smirked at him—he loved that smile that curled up the side of her mouth like that. "We'll play a game. See if you can beat me to the finish line, Pookie."
She laughed and Daryl scrambled to his feet. He wasn't going to argue. He caught her behind the neck and pulled her to him for a kiss. Her kiss was hungry—just like she claimed to be. It took nothing more than a moment of kissing her like that for the morning erection to surge back to its former glory.
"Pick your position," he commanded, when the kiss broke. Carol bit her lip at him, smirking.
Carol did pick her position, bent over the bed with her ass up in the air. She teased him by smiling back at him over her shoulder for a second. She slipped her hand down between her legs.
"Clock's ticking," she teased.
Despite her saying that she required no foreplay, Daryl still took a moment to kiss the back of her neck and nip at the exposed skin there with his teeth. She groaned in response, and he rubbed his fingers against her opening to determine, for himself, if she was as wet as she pretended to be. He wasn't disappointed. In fact, he had a pretty good feeling that he might lose this race. He slid inside of her with ease and rearranged his feet before catching her hips and finding a rhythm that felt good to him. He closed his eyes and focused on nothing more than his feelings and the sounds she made as she clearly worked herself quickly toward the finish line.
He didn't mind losing this particular competition, and he growled at her when her muscles locked tight around him in the pulsing evidence that she was at the finish line.
She buried her own face in the mattress and loudly declared her muffled satisfaction with the moment before turning her face to the side enough to speak clearly.
"Keep going," she panted. "Keep going…keep going."
Daryl had no intention of doing anything else, but her words spurred him on to allow himself faster, harder, deeper thrusts than before. He hadn't meant for profanity to spot the otherwise gentle morning, but a stream of it had escaped him somewhat accidentally when he'd come hard. Backing away from her, he pulled her up toward him, and she came for a quick embrace. She held the back of his neck, and her fingers slid up to tug at his hair. She kissed him hard and hungrily, and they spent their few moments of afterglow standing like that—him naked and her half-naked—kissing like starving people in the morning sunlight.
When the kiss broke and the frantic nature of the loving had passed, Daryl smiled at her.
"I think you were hungry for more than that milk," he teased.
"Fresh, warm, straight from the source, and—running down my leg," Carol teased.
"You tease my ass, but you're a natural-born fuckin' romantic yourself," Daryl said. "Go get the damn eggs and milk so you can have your breakfast."
Carol laughed and Daryl playfully swatted at her ass—barely making contact with his fingertips. That only made her laugh harder as she headed for the bowl of water on the dresser to dampen a rag and wash away the evidence of their morning.
Barely a moment later, there came a tapping at their door that slowly grew in confidence and volume.
"Not to interrupt anything," Lydia said through the door, "but—Mel's at the door to see if we're doing morning chores and…should I just tell her you're sleeping or…?"
"No privacy," Daryl said a whisper.
Carol snorted.
"We have a daughter now, Daryl," she teased. "That comes with the territory."
Daryl laughed quietly. Honestly, he liked the way that sounded, and he didn't really mind that they didn't have any privacy.
"Tell her we comin'!" Daryl called out. "Outside," he added quickly. "Tell her—we're comin' outside…just a minute."
Carol, already back in her pants, was smiling at him.
"Smooth," she teased. "Absolutely perfect."
"Shut up," Daryl said, working his way into his own pants. "Doin' the best I can."
"And you're doing absolutely perfect at everything," Carol said, walking over to quickly place a peck on his lips. This time, Daryl couldn't help but notice that she sounded sincere.
111
AN: For those who have read this on other stories lately, feel free to ignore.
I'll be putting this on my works for a while to make sure everyone sees it, so please ignore if you read multiple stories. I just wanted to let everyone know that it was somewhat brought to my attention that one reason people may not review, or may not review works often or past the first chapter, is that they feel unappreciated by not having their reviews responded to for each chapter and, therefore, don't really feel motivated to continue to read and/or review. I certainly don't want you to feel that way.
Admittedly, I come from the era of fic where we used to sort of consider (perhaps wrongfully) reviews as an acknowledgement that people were reading and wanted more of the story, since I have no other reliable way of knowing who is reading and cares about the story. I have always simply gone on to work on the next chapter. I have only responded to reviews that were personal and, of course, to personal messages. I, of course, read and appreciate every single review, but I have always simply put my time and energy into trying to write more for people to read and, hopefully, enjoy. I never meant to be dismissive of everyone.
I know that it feels bad to feel that what you do is unappreciated or unnoticed. Fic writers often feel that way with a lack of reviews. I wouldn't want other people to feel unappreciated. I absolutely appreciate when people review. It lets me know that people are reading and enjoying the story. It's a sign that I'm not wasting my time, and it gives me motivation to keep going. However, I don't want people to feel unappreciated either. So, I'm going to start doing my best to respond to your reviews. Please note that, the more you say to me, the more I'll obviously have to say in my response. (If you're one of those people who may find this awkward, please let me know, and I won't respond to you. My goal is not to make anyone uncomfortable.) Also, I appreciate your patience, as this will be something that does take time and, as such, it may take me a while to respond to them out of the time that I do have outside of work and adult life, since my free time and the energy that life leaves me is quite limited. I thank you for your patience and understanding.
I hope you enjoyed the chapter. Please don't forget to let me know what you think.